Why is Highcroft Alpacas using the AGE Program?

Jointly developed by AAA and AANZ, the Across-herd Genetic Evaluation program is all about maximising the returns from your breeding programme, through the identification of positive traits and an individual alpaca's ability to pass these on to their offspring.

Run by Advanced Breeding Services (ABS) in Australia, AGE is integrated with the IAR register (the pedigree register for Australian and New Zealand bloodlines); giving it great scope to form complex genetic links that add to the accuracy of the results produced.

Breeders send in trait data (fleece statistics etc) from their alpacas, in particular from their progeny, which is combined with pedigree data and analysed by a BLUP (Best Linear Unbiased Prediction) program to produce Alpaca Breeding Values (ABV's).

The use of Estimated Breeding Values (EBV's) or in our case Alpaca Breeding Values (ABV's) is well documented in the sheep, cattle and deer industries. Breeders in these livestock industries are using EBV's to increase the rate of genetic improvement though the identification of elite animals, both sires and dams.

From the experiences of these industries a 3 to 4 fold increase in the rate of genetic gain is possible by using EBV's. An increased rate of genetic gain means that better alpacas and fleece are produced sooner, thus speeding up the financial returns from your alpaca breeding program.

At present the number of animals entered into the AGE database is comparatively small, when considering the total herd size of Australia and NZ combined. That being said, the number of animals analysed is sufficient for the data generated to provide information that is statistically valid and of a reasonable confidence level. As the number of alpacas entered into the database increases the accuracy of the ABV's and comparison between alpacas and between different herds will improve.

Highcroft and Aspiring Alpacas have been members of AGE since the program started in 2003 and all of our progeny are entered into the data base, so all of our alpacas have solid data from progeny and siblings giving us a high level of confidence in the breeding values and selection indexes that AGE produces for our alpacas.

News: Australia releases AGE "TOP 50" Lists
Recently the AGE programme released its first "TOP 50" lists. These lists represent the top 50 sires and dams enrolled in the Australasian AGE programme for three Breeding Objective Values (BOV).

Fibre plus, Fibre Value and Fibre Quality
A BOV combines more than one ABV to allow breeders to select animals that will improve a trait towards their breeding goal without adversely affecting other traits. Each list is clearly labelled so you can see the weightings applied in each.

There are 747 sires enrolled within AGE and the sires on the lists represent the top 6.7% of these sires for the BOV's reported.

There are 2136 dams enrolled within AGE and the Dams on the top 50 lists comprise the top 2.3% of these dams for the BOV's reported.

Therefore the alpacas that have made it onto these "Top 50" lists are among the elite animals in Australasia for the genetic traits focused on in this analysis.

New Zealand alpacas are well represented on the lists and as such it gives us great pleasure and excitement to see Highcroft and Aspiring Alpacas up with the best.

Real standouts are;

"Pentland Soleada" - a female we imported from Australia back in 2000 and who leads the "Top 50" females in two lists and is ranked 2nd in the third. It is also extremely pleasing to note that Soleada outranks even the males in the Fibre Value and Fibre Plus indexes.

"Pentland Sundancer" - Son of Soleada and our first stud male. Sundancer's cria have always stood out as being something special and now AGE backs up our in-house observations.

"Aspiring Marion" - Daughter of Soleada and mother of some great offspring herself, Marion continues to show the power of a good genetic line.

Other Highcroft and Aspiring Alpacas that feature include Ampleur Annie, Highcroft Yarrow and Aspiring Helena - all of whom have since been sold but are represented in our breeding programme somewhere along the line.

Just as pleasing is that lots of our other alpacas either just miss out on the Lists, or are not eligible to be on them as they have not got progeny entered into AGE yet.

For more information take a look at the "Top 50" Lists below (PDF format);

Dams: Fibre Plus 2009.pdf

Dams: Fibre Quality 2009.pdf

Dams: Fibre Value 2009.pdf

Sires: Fibre Plus 2009.pdf

Sires: Fibre Quality 2009.pdf

Sires: Fibre Value 2009.pdf