Camelid exploitation, despite its economic antiquity in our nation, recently has awakened greater interest in investigators. Currently, there are more than 2,500,000 llamas in the Altiplano, which is the highest number of camelids on the world. Production is organic, with the llama capital of Bolivia being the department of Oruro. This work's objective is to determine four production parameters: composition and structure of llama herds, percentage of births, cria [calf] mortality, and crias that reach 5 months old, in 3 communities of Ayllu Pumasa of Saucar’ province, department of Oruro. The llama-raising system is traditional and herds contain more than 50 llamas per family. Exploitation of llama products still does not have much importance more than commercialization of llama meat in local markets. This study occurred with 9527 llamas from 60 herds, in which the composition of llamas by breed, class, age, and sex was determined, along with birth, mortality, and crias that reached 5 months old, through living in the communities that permitted specialized registration in adequate moments according to the llamas' behavior with families selected for this purpose. The analysis of variance reveals that the communities' composition is highly significant at P<0.01, as well as the communities' behavior, but the interaction between community and composition is not significant (P>0.05). The herds were composed of 26% lone females, 21% nursing females, 21% crias, 16% pregnant females, 13% ancutas, 2% studs, and 1% geldings. In reproductive management, the community does not intervene aside from pasturing in different properties to practice rotation during the rainy season. The breed composition in the communities is highly significant at P>0.01; the herds are of predominantly q'ara stock (42%), with hybrids at 39%, t'ajalli at 13%, and others at 6%. In the age observations, the females (nursing, pregnant, and alone) are animals more than 5 years old. The opposite occurs with the males, which are very young due to the commercialization of high-quality llama meat. Birth rates in the communities are not significant at P<0.01. The average is 34.01% with a 16.58% coefficient of variation. The communities' mortality is significant at P<0.01 between the communities, having an average of 2.58% mortality among llama herds. The variance analysis of crias reaching 5 months old at P<0.01 is not significant. The average was 92.51% in the communities' herds. The llama herds do not totally belong to the families living in the communities. The combined llamas belong to brothers and/or children (who live in the cities), and in some cases the community member is simply a guardian.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:BGMYU2/oai:scholarsarchive.byu.edu:etd-6375 |
| Date | 01 January 2004 |
| Creators | Herrera Lopez, Magin |
| Publisher | BYU ScholarsArchive |
| Source Sets | Brigham Young University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | Theses and Dissertations |
| Coverage | Saucari (Bolivia : Province) |
| Rights | http://lib.byu.edu/about/copyright/ |
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