So you want to be a Breeder – Food for Thought
by Debi Garvin
Many people enter into animal production without the proper knowledge base and foundation. Before one ever breeds an animal, they should determine whether they want to be a producer or a breeder. We currently have way too few breeders and way too many producers. If you merely want to put two animals together to either make money, see what happens, experience the “joy of birth”, etc. then you are a producer and should only consider producing food animals, as there will always be a market for your poor decisions. However, if you really want to breed you must carefully consider what breeding an animal entails – the good, the bad and the ugly. First of all, if you breed enough, you WILL have dystocias, abortions, stillborns, birth defects, and early deaths. If you are not prepared for the horrors and vet bills you may face, you should probably just get some neutered males and enjoy your animals.
If you want to be a breeder (and I mean a real breeder), you must first do some research to find out what the ideal is. The ideal must not only include conformation and desired type but also disposition. My ideal llama is tall and stretchy with a straight topline, abundant bone, medium wool of a silky nature combined with elegance and style (what I refer to as the WOW factor). This animal must also be easy to handle and have a pleasant disposition. Once you have the ideal in mind, go look at a lot of animals and evaluate their pros and cons, always keeping the ideal animal in mind. From that list of ideal traits, develop your selection criteria for buying and breeding. Never place a superficial trait higher on your list than a functional trait, and never place a simple dominant/recessive trait higher on the list than one with an additive effect. For example, my “musts” would include correct conformation, straight strong topline, abundant bone, fluid movement, and pleasant disposition. My “nice to haves” would include fiber type, a stretchy look, and an elegant head. My “must not haves” would include any conformational faults, poor toplines, poor overall balance or thick heavy wool that is hard to maintain and keep clean. When we were searching for our first herd sire, our main criteria were conformation, movement, and disposition. We did not care about color or other superficial traits, as I was looking for a solid foundation. The stud we found met all the criteria we wanted but he did not have any head wool (which was the craze at the time), and therefore we bought him relatively inexpensively. He ended up siring the 1999 ALSA National Grand Champion Medium Wool Male.
The primary difference between breeding production animals vs. companion animals is that all production animals have a quantifiable end product, and they are bred specifically to produce that end product. Companion animals, on the other hand, are bred for companionship (and in some cases performance traits), making disposition and correct conformation essential. For example, no matter what color a dairy cow is or how pretty she is, the success of that cow is measured by milk production and the quality of that milk. In meat goats, the measurement is how quickly the animal reaches market weight and bone to carcass ratio. In beef cattle, the measurements include feed efficiency, average daily gain, and various carcass traits. All these examples employ measurable end products and end points. In many companion animals, the breeds eventually split into two categories – those that are bred for a functional purpose and those that are not. The functional breeders have to produce a measurable product or they go out of business. Examples of these include race horses (how fast can the horse run); hunting dogs (can the dogs really hunt and retrieve); and in the camelid industry, pack animals (can the animals pack and carry a load). Each of the three examples above includes end uses that have quantifiable, objective goals that add value to the animal, giving breeders a common goal and objective.
When people breed animals that have no quantifiable functional end product (as in the case of most companion animals), the measurement of what a “good” animal is can vary as dramatically as people’s opinions. Many times the definition of “good animal” is based on marketing hype and has nothing to do with functionality, which in turn leads to fad breeding and tremendous market swings. Often these fads involve characteristics that have no real value, but because they are the “in thing”, people jump on the bandwagon and compromise generations of very selective breeding in order to obtain this new trait or look. Examples of these include breeding for color in companion animals, black and white Paint horses, “super woolly” llamas that were popular in the late 90’s, and the “new” suri llama/huarizo. In regard to llamas, if fiber has no functional value it is merely a fad. The best example of functional fiber is in pack animals. Their coat (minimal head, leg and neck wool combined with abundant guard hairs and an undercoat that is easily shed) has been developed and selected for a defined purpose – to keep the animals cool on pack trips and to shed debris and rain. Some breeders of non pack llamas like silky fiber because it tends to shed debris and is easy to clean up on the animal. In contrast, the super heavy wools and most recently the suri's functionality stems from an end use of the fiber off the animal (i.e. garments or rugs). Unfortunately, since there is not an established commercial market for llama fiber, there is no way to objectively measure fiber value. If a true market were established for llama fiber in the United States, then fiber quality and type would become a measurable end product and therefore (as an end use product) would be less subject to fads and personal opinions. Breeders would carefully select for those fiber characteristics that the market demands, thus creating a new type of llama – the fiber animal. But, do llama enthusiasts want to go there? Do we want to take a magnificent companion animal and turn them into a production animal? Production animals (other than those raised specifically for food) almost always have a secondary meat market for animals who do not meet production and quality standards (i.e. alpacas in South America, poor producing dairy cows, etc.). For the most part, Americans do not eat their companion animals. In addition, the emphasis placed on fiber would automatically de-emphasize other traits that have been selected for over hundreds of years, most importantly conformation and disposition.
The bottom line is that ALL breeders should have a road map for where they are going and a clear plan for getting there. Every breeding decision one makes should be with the goal to improve the breed, not merely to make money. Breeding for the latest fad or fashion is always a “breeders market” and will always crash once the fad is over. When the market crashes, one must look at what is left – do you still have a useful animal, or have you merely generated a new rescue situation. One must also ask during the height, and more importantly during the decline of a breeders market, what happens to the 95% of males that are not stud quality? Do they have a use as a companion animal, or have the producers of these new fads completely ignored the two most essential traits (disposition and conformation) of a companion animal in search of monetary gain?