Suri Breeders Crucial Information In my efforts to improve purifying the Suri breed I have had to examine thousands of registries. The one thing I’ve learned is the certificate of registration never paints the whole picture without homework on your part. I will explain how you can improve your chances of buying Suris that will lead your breeding program in the direction of purifying the breed and help determining probabilities of its purity based on its bloodlines from the registry.
What you will see in the following actual registries is how misleading they really can be and how buying a Suri because it is full Peruvian or has only suri phenotype bloodlines could be taking you backwards in your breeding program. The alpacas although not named will be looked up on the Suri Selection Tool with their ARI# and if the alpaca can be determined to be Homozygous (PURE) will be labeled SS. If the alpaca is determined to be Heterozygous (carries a huacaya gene) it will be labeled Ss. If no determination can be made because of lack of offspring it will be labeled UK (unknown) and last if a huacaya is in the pedigree it will be labeled ss.
Because the suri gene is dominant a SS suri will always produce a suri so we will give these Suris a 100% passing of the suri gene. A heterozygous Suri Ss will pass the Suri gene 50% and a huacaya ss always passes on a huacaya gene 0%. Unknowns are where the equation gets tricky and has got many breeders into trouble. I feel that at least 75% of the imported Suris are heterozygous and some importers will tell you that number is higher. The importation of colored Suris into the USA really sky rocketed the number of heterozygous Suris in the US. For sake of over projection I assume all unknown Suris to be heterozygous and give them 50%. *** I have made one exception to this and that is Suris that originated from the Accoyo ranch. I have done extensive research and found only 2 original imports from this ranch to be heterozygous. So I give these Suris 100%. If you need to find the origin of an imported Peruvian suri I highly recommend you go to Northwest Alpacas website and use the Peruvian Import Tool to find the farm the Suri originated from.
The easiest way to start is to begin with the Sire and Dam. Look them both up. If both are homozygous you can stop. Their offspring is also homozygous.
This mating will always produce a pure homozygous offspring
This second registry has a known Homozygous Sire and an unknown Dam Male Suri-150 crias all Suris SS 100%
This registry goes one generation on both sides with the sire being Homozygous the result of being an offspring from a homozygous mating. The dam’s side was a mating of a known Homozygous male and an unknown import dam Suri Male-SS 100%
The following registry has two generations on the dam’s side and side notice all the breedings were done to known homozygous males. Suri Male-SS 100%
Suri Male-92% Suri Male-SS-100%
This registry will take you 3 generations back on the dam’s side and has a huacaya female listed on the registry. There has been incredible controversy over seeing a huacaya on a suri registry. This is short sided in my opinion because as you can see from the results you have a better chance with the cria produced being homozygous than with example #2 and #3 and as we show more examples you will see that knowing what type of purity probabilities you are dealing with is better than using unknown alpacas registered as Suris because of phenotype. The mating of huacaya that produces a suri is always heterozygous and no different than any other suri that is known to be heterozygous even if it has 5 generations of Suris on it’s registry as we will demonstrate in a later example. Suri Male-SS 100% Suri Male-92% Suri Male-SS-100%
Now we will look at a registry that looks fabulous on paper. Every alpaca is full Peruvian and we have huge names being marketed. Some of the males were silver and many show awards were won. Please note to win shows you have to be nice and usually exhibit great suri phenotype qualities but you don’t have to be HOMOZYGOUS!
Silver Suri Male-Ss 6 crias-5 Suris 1 huacaya=50% Accoyo Male-100% SS
Accoyo female-7 suri crias -SS 100%
So what you have here is a full Peruvian female who is 5/8th Accoyo comes from a long list of show winners and has at best a roll of the dice of being homozygous. The first mistake was made breeding the female to a heterozygous male trying to produce color on the sire’s side.
The result netted a heterozygous male who was used in a breeding program because his pedigree looked good and was silver. Then the same mistake was made again breeding a full Accoyo female to the male produced from that breeding. Nothing takes breeding programs back words faster than using unknown or heterozygous males to breed with. So here is an example, although looks like a great registry, that puts this alpaca at less probability of being homozygous than the one with a huacaya on the pedigree.
The last registry is one that can be avoided by using a homozygous male every time you breed. It shows 3 generations of Suris on each side with a mix of Peruvian, Bolivian, and Chilean Suris. The net result was a huacaya female. The result of having a huacaya from 2 Suris parents is because BOTH PARENTS WERE HETEROZYGOUS and each one passed on the huacaya gene. Now a huacaya birth from two suri parents is a huacaya, always will be a huacaya and if bred to a huacaya will always produce a huacaya because they never received a suri gene plain and simple. They also get a bad rap from the huacaya breeders but I have viewed several over the years and find them to exhibit a very soft lustrous fiber and very soft handle.
Import Male-Ss 50%
Suri Male 3 crias one huacaya Ss 56%
Import Male-50% Accoyo Male-SS 100% Suri Male-SS 100%
Suri Female 62%-now that she has produced a huacaya you know she is heterozygous and is put down to 50%- and should always be bred to a pure male
Import Male-50% Suri Male-SS 100%
In this last example you have discovered that both the dam and sire are heterozygous because the mating created a huacaya .One huacaya gene from the sire and one from the dam. When using the suri selection tool to figure out if a certain suri has had a huacaya making it heterozygous you will want to change the probability to 50% and assign that alpaca the Ss on the registry you are working on. Once a female Suri has been determined to be heterozygous and you own her you should only breed her to a homozygous pure male. If a Suri male is determined to be heterozygous it should be culled from your breeding program. You will only be taking it backwards if you are trying to purify the Suri Breed which should be the goal of the American Suri Breeder.
I’ve been breeding Suri Alpacas for nearly 20 years and for the most part of that time it has never been addressed or even mentioned to new suri buyers about how to buy and breed for purity. I believe it is lack of education. I was out of the alpaca business for 6 years and started back up 3 years ago. When I raised Suris in the past before my hiatus, my former wife and I had an operation that consisted of around 150 to 200 Suris at all times. In all that time and 100’s of new crias we never had one huacaya. Our males we used were all homozygous.
The herd consisted of Accoyo Herdsires. I never even thought about why it happened with other suri breeders because it never happened to me. When I returned to the alpaca world 3 years ago, boy it had changed. They seemed to be a lot of controversy in the suri world. I started buying Suris from various breeders and could see there was a definite array of opinions on what a good suri was. Some said buy only Peruvian, others said only Accoyo, I was told never buy a suri with huacaya in its registry, even told to buy only Suris who had won at shows because that’s where the best money is. In most all cases buyers and sellers were looking at pedigrees and making decisions based upon how the registries looked, and how many show awards were won. It appeared to me that breeders forgot part of the equation and that was could these Suris produce huacayas. What sparked my interest to fully understand how the suri breed became diluted in the 6 years I was away begins with a conversation with Mike Safley at Northwest Alpacas. Mike has been a long and dear friend of mine since the mid 1980’s and believe me no one person has done more to get the alpaca market booming in the USA as well as other countries through out the world, than Mike. I was surfing (computer lingo) his website when I returned to the business and was looking at his Suris for sale. I had noticed he used the term F-1 on several of his Suris so I called him to ask what an F-1 suri was. He explained to me that it’s a term used for Suris out of huacaya dams. First cross Suris he went on to explain were no different than about 75% of the other female Suris in the US the percentage estimated to be heterozygous. I went on to ask him why he bred Suris to the huacayas and he explained to find out if his males were Homozygous pure. He told me if you bred a suri male to 10 huacayas and they produced 10 Suris that the male is PURE and would never ever produce a huacaya. I found this very interesting and thought what a great breeding practice. Mike was trying to establish the purity of his Suri males.
It is a given that a high percentage of Suris are heterozygous both males and females and nothing to be ashamed of. It’s just a fact. The thing we have to do as suri breeders is educate ourselves and our new clients about how to breed towards purity. By reading the articles mentioned earlier you should have all the knowledge you need to set forth on improving your breeding program, as well as have the knowledge to teach new suri buyers the same. I for one think some governing suri or alpaca group should have educational classes about suri breeding practices before we dilute the breed any further. I also feel that pricing Suris should be closer scaled to there purity probabilities and quality rather than how good the registry looks and whether it has huacaya in the ancestry. Lastly I believe that all the known heterozygous males, as well as low probability males should be gelded so as not to possibly mate by accident. I can hear the death threats coming now but it’s the only way to purify the suri breed.
In conclusion you have the education available, you have the suri selection tool, and we have enough homozygous males available in the US isn’t it time to do something.
Happy Trails Bill Graham
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