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Zoiks! A fawn full accoyo female with CPeruvian Express as her sire and Caligula and Albus as her grandsires. Blue ribbons and color championships on both sides of the pedigree. We named her Carlotta because she was concieved in a trailer in the parking lot at the Empire Extravaganza outside Syracuse. As you would expect, she is covered in curly ringlets of silken lustrous fleece. She is now a permanent member of our foundation herd, and is currently bred to Accoyo Magneeto.
Warren at Washington University St. Louis is sequencing the alpaca genome. This means we will know the entire sequence of one alpaca and its Carly! Animals selected to be sequenced become famous in the world of geneticists. We were pretty excited that one of our alpacas was chosen to be the representative for the alpaca genome. The lab knew that Andy raised alpaca and asked for 12 blood samples from our girl herd and chose the one that showed the least genetic variation. Carly's contribution to the genome study has been to periodically donate blood, and from Carly's perspective they needed a lot (120 milliliters so far). When the alpaca genome is complete it will be easier to find and identify alpaca genetic disorders. It is likely there are genetic causes for problems like choanal atresia, wry face, polydactyly, heart murmurs, and crooked tails to name just a few. However some of these conditions may be caused by environmental factors as well. Carly is helping sort this out. Carly's life goes on as usual. She plays with her younger sister and the new cria. Of course, she doesn't know or care that she is making an important contribution to the study of alpaca (and even human) health, but we are grateful for her contribution to science nevertheless.
Newsflash: Carly has had her first baby a beautiful full accoyo fawn son. His father is Victor's
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