On December 10th 2005 EAA, NEAOBA & PAOBA co-sponsored the first in a series of Alpaca Type Conferences designed to create regional position papers which will then be unified or melded into a National Position Paper in November of this year. Then in February of 2007 the Membership of AOBA will vote to either make this position a National Breed Standard or not.

Of course Murphy's Law always prevails and the weather didn't fully cooperate, as Thursday and Friday much of the region was blanketed with snow but those that did wander to the event noticed that the road crews did an amazing job cleaning up and travel was quite easy getting there. We had just over 200 attendees regardless of the weather. Dr. Steve Purdy started off the day with a talk about BVD and what we know about how the virus acts in cows and what little we know about Camelids, then at 9:00 we started the topics of Breed Standards. Dick Walker spoke about the Suri Network's achievements in a Suri Breed Standard, Jude Anderson compared the Canadian and Australian Standards, Mike Safley lectured on how a Breed Standard would help Judges in the ring and give the system some consistency and Dr. Purdy explained how Form and Function would relate to a Breed Standard. We then took a break for lunch and came back with a presentation on the Camelid Studies Program at UMASS, followed by a question and answer period. Time was starting to be an issue so 1 minute questions were allowed and the moderator Brett Kaysen asked the panel to answer questions that were posed.

Next we came to the real meat and potatoes part of the day, the attendees were randomly (with the exception of Suri Fleece) broken into groups of 10-12 and asked to do work on certain parts of the body. The body was broken into groups as follows. Head (3 groups), Frame (6 groups), Alpaca Type (3 groups), Suri Fleece (2 groups) and Huacaya Fleece (3 groups). Each group sat down and did trait ranking on their body part and then developed a position on that body part, whether it was a sentence, paragraph or bullets. The groups for each body section then united and talked about what each subgroup came up with and then melded the 3 statements into one position. Since Frame makes up such a large part of the alpaca 6 groups were made. It was asked that they sit down in 2 groups of 3 to determine their final statement resulting in 2 frame positions. Both the trait ranking and the final statements are below.

The material written by the groups is incredible. Please take your time reading it and I think you will be amazed at how thoughtfully it was written. It was inspiring watching the groups work. As you can imagine there were individuals in each group that were very anti Breed Standards, some that were very pro Breed Standards and some that were varying forms of in the middle. These personalities worked incredibly well together and the groups developed statements that were mostly comfortable to all.

An exit survey was handed out and 84 people decided to leave their feedback. A few points were extrapolated from them and shared with a number of future Type Conferences that have been scheduled. One was that attendees really wanted to have an opponent of Breed Standards on the panel and they wanted to hear the possible negatives of Breed Standards. The other topic that was brought up a number of times is that attendees would have liked to have a Commercial Fiber Expert on the panel. Lastly there just wasn't enough time.

All great suggestions and easy to institute with the exception of the opponent of Breed Standards on the panel, our research has shown there aren't many or any of these industry experts out there. If any of our members have any suggestions as to a person that would be appropriate to sit on the panel and offer this view please let me know and I would gladly forward it to the future Type Conference Organizers. One suggestion I have made to Organizers as a manner to compensate if they can't find anyone is to have a longer schedule which would of course allow more discussion, which would allow people to feel that their views were heard more.

The conference was a great first step; we learned a lot as organizers and have made a number of important suggestions to future conferences. Of course all of you have the opportunity to attend as many as you would like and hopefully many will make it to the National event in Reno this November 1st and 2nd. Please take the opportunity to read what has come out of our time spent in Springfield and feel free to give your comments.

Trait Ranking

This list represents how groups ranked each trait. On the left is the trait and on the right is how each group ranked the trait.

As a group the attendees ranked the following traits

A - Not Important
B- Important
C- Very Important

Group Positions

Write-up Describing Alpaca Type

The alpaca is a single-coated fiber producing member of the camelid family, with an alert, inquisitive nature. The alpaca exhibits a wide range of natural colors, from white to black, and a multitude of color patterns. The alpaca's look begins with the head. The ears are shaped like an arrowhead and are erect. The muzzle is soft and wedge shaped. Head and neck make up about 1/3 of the height. Neck is straight and near upright. Back is straight or slightly convex, ending in a broad rump sloping slightly downward to a low-set and straight tail. In profile the alpaca is squared off on four strong legs that are well-covered with fiber to the toes. The animal is graceful and proud in appearance with an upright stance and moves with fluidity

Huacaya and suris are distinguished primarily by fiber characteristics. Huacaya fleece stands perpendicular to the skin, with groups of fibers bunching together into staples or locks. The staples have crinkle or crimp along their entire length. Suri fleece is straight and hangs close to the body, with a distinct part along the topline. Fibers are also grouped into locks resembling tassels. The wool cap on both types is dense, but maintain the same character as the blanket (upright in huacaya and draping the brow of suris).

Suri have longer ears and straighter toplines than huacaya, these differences are accentuated by the different character of the fleece.

Write-up Describing the Alpaca Head

Write-up Describing the Alpaca Frame (Yellow Group)

Write-up Describing the Alpaca Frame (Blue Group)

Write-up describing Suri Fleece

The ranking of the suri fiber fleece was a great exercise for us, but after reading the Suri Network News statement on The Suri Fiber, we want to endorse this statement as written.

The Ideal Suri style fleece will e comprised of straight fibers (without crimping) which exhibit a high degree of luster, provide a cool slick handle, and exhibit uniform, independent, well-defined locks throughout the head, neck, body, and leg coverage. Uniformity of luster, lock, staple length, fineness and density is important. Suri lock styles exist along a continuum from tightly twisted to straight. Current nomenclature recognizes five distinct styles along this continuum:

1. tight twisted pencil
2. pearled
3. curled
4. flat twisted
5. straight

All fiber evaluation should consider age and environmental aspects.

1. luster
2. lock type
3. fineness
4. density
5. uniformity
6. handle
7. coverage
   
   

Write-up describing Huacaya Fleece