Need Advice on Llama Market

I need a system that I can use to market Llamas. I figured I could use a custom post type and custom meta properties to represent each llama. Right now, I need to enter about 600 of them.

Most of the llama properties are simple: Name, Gender, Date of Birth, Certificate ID, etc.

I decided to write a plugin so I could make the llamas theme-agnostic. My thought was that I would hook the save_post event and, using the meta-field values, construct the layout I want for the llamas and store it in the post_content field (disabling the editor). I would do the same for an abbreviated version in the post_excerpt field.

The problem is that the sire_name and mare_name fields are the names of other llamas and in the content need to be presented as links to those llama cpts.

I tried creating a custom template for the single-llama.php and it flat didn’t work. Is there a better way to approach this?