We are proud to announce that we could add a new VILYA?alpaca man to our herd.?His name is Diomedes Dart Alyst, and we could buy him from KJAlpacas in Alberta. He will be two years old in June. He is already a big, strong VILYA alpaca man?and has a very gentle character.
VILYA alpaca man Diomedes Dart Alyst
We bought him because his fleece is gorgeous. His last 2015 histogram showed excellent fineness of his fibre and other very promising fibre parameter. If you like to learn more about histograms please read our blog. On Sunday April 30th we could shear Dart already, and again we got a wonderful fleece. Based on his fibre quality we intend to use Dart, our new VILYA alpaca man, as one important pillar of our breeding program. These male alpacas are called herdsire. Unfortunately we have to wait at least till next year, maybe longer. Dart will not be mature enough earlier to mate a female alpaca. While females can be mated at the age of 14 to 18 months earliest, males usually have to be three to four years old. We already bought the females which will be mated to our VILYA alpaca man Dart. They have excellent fibre quality as well, and by breeding Dart to those females, we hope to get alpaca babies, called crias, with even better fleece quality. That is the intention of our breeding program. Within a breeding program you usually decide which traits are important for you, and then you select and mate the respective animals.
COKAL's breeding program
In general you can breed for phenotypes. Phenotype describes the physical appearance. It might be colour, for example. Or you can breed for fleece features. That is what Canadian Okanagan Alpaca Ranch is doing. We aim to breed alpacas with the best quality of fibre. The most important fibre parameter in this regard is fineness, measured in micron. A low fibre diameter is responsible for the softness of the manufactured clothing. The finest fibre on the planet is produced by Vicunas, the Peruvian ?cousins? of alpacas. We aim to breed alpacas, which are producing fibres reaching nearly the fineness of Vicuna fibre. That is why these alpacas are called VILYA, Vicuna like yarn alpacas
http://neu.aabach-farm.de/blog/2015/10/28/was-ist-ein-vilya/ ...and Diomedes Dart Alyst is a VILYA alpaca man. If you want to subscribe to our mailing list you will learn more about alpacas, VILYA alpaca, alpaca fibre and alpaca wool clothing.
