Singletree Farm’s Breeding Program
Our breeding females are all
of pure Chilean genetics. One was imported 6
years ago from Chile (by another farm) and the others were domestically born.
Our two oldest females, Midnight, a bay black 6 yr
old, and Appricotta Lace (Lacey) the Chilean import who is also around 6yrs old, were
chosen for our breeding program because they were proven mothers with good mothering
skills and lots of milk. We were also able to
track their color diversity through the crias they had already produced.
Midnight has produced both light & dark fawn
crias and black & white. She’s an
easy birthing and very attentive to her offspring. Her
mother “Switzerland Obsidian” has produced healthy crias for the past 16 years
and retired this year at Switzerland.. Obsidian
has extremely fine fiber, and when mated with a Suri, she has produced Suris.
In turn, Midnight’s babies have been vigorous
and beautiful.
Little was known about Lacey
when she was imported, but she has very good
conformation, excellent bite and she had three healthy babies (U.S.A. born) prior to our
purchasing her. Her first cria, a girl,
looked exactly like her….reddish fawn fiber with a full white face.
Since then she has produced only boys, and
they were all light to dark fawn with some white in their faces. We are really hoping for a girl this year!
Her 2000 cria was Valentino and he was sold
at 3 months old.
Kissee will be having her
first cria this year. She is an Arizona born
alpaca with Chilean genetics. We first saw
her as a baby and loved her sweet personality and deep chocolate coloring.
When she came up for sale at 18 months old, we
quickly brought her home. Because she was a
small alpaca, we waited until she was past her 2nd birthday before we bred her.
She was an easy breeder (1 breeding and three
spit-offs). She is going to have a Sansa cria
in mid-October.
BREEDING METHODS:
We do not do field breeding.
We have a breeding pen where we introduce the
female to the male. This is done either
before 11:00a.m. or between 4 and 6 p.m. We believe that the herd sire’s libido is
best served by
We separate the cria from the
mother prior to taking her to the breeding pen. We
do not want any distractions for the mating pair, nor do we want to risk injury to the
cria. The male is kept on a lead rope until
he has romanced his girl into a kush position. If the female is not receptive to the male,
she may not be within her cycle, or, she just might not like the male.
We will remove her from the pen and keep
trying every two days until she is willing to submit. We never introduce a maiden to an inexperienced male.
Since female alpacas spend their entire
lives in a pregnant state, we want their first breeding experience to be trauma free.
The same goes for a male. Sometimes they need a little coaching from an
experienced male before they are willing to risk a possible rejection before they know
what to do. For young males,
Once the female has submitted
to the male and it seems as if there is going to be a successful breeding, we release the
lead rope and check to make sure her tail is out of the way, and the male has indeed found
the right spot. ( For our herdsire, Sansa, a
breeding will last about 20 minutes, then he’s ready to take her out to dinner).
We will repeat this every two days until the
female refuses to submit.
A female refusal usually
results in a giant spitting fit at the male. Once she has “spit him off”, We will again introduce the female every two
days until we have three definite refusals by the female. All breeding days, times and lengths and reactions
are recorded on a gestation chart. The next
step is to wait 28 days and have a blood progesterone test done by our vet.
If a pregnancy is detected by the blood test, we
will assume she is pregnant and note the progesterone level on her breeding records.
We will note the probable delivery date on the
gestation chart. We will schedule an
ultra-sound test for 90 days after the last successful breeding to confirm the pregnancy.
In the meantime, we will watch the female for any
signs or behavior that may indicate the breeding did not “take”.
If we think she might have slipped the
pregnancy, we will do an additional blood test prior to the 90 day ultra-sound.
Most females will ignore the males
once they are pregnant, but we have seen females who just really like flirting even when they are pregnant.