AOBA today announced the Alpaca Emphasis Guide........

Which is very weird because I announced it on this Blog back on August 27th of 2007 when it was published on the NWA web site. The AOBA board of directors met in Louisville Kentucky on May 16, 2007 and approved the Alpaca Emphasis Guide.

Jeepers its been in the oven for 10 months almost as long as it takes to grow a healthy cria and the AOBA announcement serves to confuse the issue by saying it isn't part of the show rules but it is a significant step forward for the show rules....and that its a guide for a member planning to show but primarily for judges....this is one schizophrenic guide!

If you want to read it... well then you will have to go to www.alpacashows.com but thats an AOBA members only site so if you want to read it and you are not currently an AOBA member then use this The Alpaca Emphasis Guide


The Emphasis Guide is not a part of the AOBA show rules but rather it is a guide for a member who is considering putting an alpaca in the show ring.

History
The idea for the Alpaca Emphasis Guide began at a meeting of judges. The idea was first proposed at the 2005 AOBA National Show in Salt Lake City as a means of augmenting the AOBA handbook which identifies positive and negative alpaca traits but does not give any guidelines as to the relative importance. The handbook also failed to distinguish the relative importance of traits between younger and older alpacas.
During subsequent meetings, the judges discussed and modified the original chart. Since then the chart has been reviewed, edited and approved by the Judges Training and Certification Committee (JTCC), the AOBA Show Rules Committee (SRC), and the Judges Advisory Committee (JAC). The guide was implemented for the first time at the July 2007 Form and Function Clinic in Golden, Colorado.

Purpose
The primary use for the guide is to train alpaca judges. The purpose of the guide is to help judges consistently prioritize alpaca traits in the show ring. The guide identifies important traits and catalogues them into three classifications:
1) priority emphasis,
2) moderate emphasis
3) lesser emphasis.

The chart is based on three guiding principles:
1) the form to function aspect of conformation
2) the textile value of fleece
3) the heritability of the traits involved.

The guide also takes into account whether the alpaca is male or female and their age: juvenile, yearling, and adult.