So as Adeline’s birthday treat we visited Surico – an alpaca farm nestled in the gently bubbling hills just shy of Lake Rotorua. As one of the nearest alpaca farms to us, we couldn’t resist a visit. And we’re rather glad we did.

Within minutes of arriving our host Hermione took us through to a pen and we watched the very miracle of creation unfold a few feet in front of us. Yep, it was breeding time alpaca style – and this meant one very happy male whose orgling sounds were bouncing around the hills.

Update – and here’s one I found on YouTube:

In the pen next door were the new born crias and their mums, all humming reassuringly to each other. Beautiful little things. One female who had given birth a week ago was already lying down next to the fence – this being typical female behaviour indicating that one whole week was long enough to be footloose and fancy free. She wanted in on the action.

Hermione took us around her farm and introduced us to some of her 150 alpacas living on just about 32 acres. The majority are white suris (see this post about suri alpacas) and that’s the real focus of their breeding programme.  It’s all about genetics, and Surico have some great credentials – have a look at their show results. Just standing in the paddocks chatting to Hermione whilst the alpacas approached inquisitively made it well worth the trip. There’s such curiosity in those big doe eyes and they radiate an appreciably calm energy.

As we left, I made a suggestion to Adeline: we don’t HAVE to get married next year. We could buy a starter herd instead.

“Er, no.”

Ah well, everything in good time…

Anyway – back to the title. We do love fleece. Especially rare fleeces of a, shall we say, international variety.

So we’re delighted to have worked on a project all about the very best wools, fibers and blends from around the world. Here is the result: www.internationalfleeces.com. More on how we approached the project.

Based in the US, International Fleeces is an importer and retailer of fibers for hand spinners from around the globe. They are eco-friendly, animal friendly, practice fair trade, and have unique fibers. So they fit perfectly into our desire to only work with ethical companies. If you’re a spinner yourself, visit the site, sign up for the newsletter or say hello to the owner (she’s lovely).

WeLoveAlpacas on hold

Unfortunately the worst GBP/NZD exchange rate since the 80s has forced us to postpone plans for a lifestyle block and setting up our WeLoveAlpacas operation. Still, it’s not all bad – our revamped web design site was featured on moluv.com, business is busy and we’re excited to be creating an online shop for an international fleece company at the moment. Cue lots of amusement at the fantastic supplier photography and subject matter we’ve got to work with. We’ll keep you updated on the launch. It’s going to be a beautiful site…

Hmmm, I wonder what sort of search traffic that will refer?

Anyway, despite the early flippancy this is a really serious subject. As wannabe alpaca breeders, we’re facing the questions every newbie alpaca owner has to answer. Top of the list is how to select a quality foundation herd. Everything flows from this point, so it must be the correct blend for your circumstances. For us we’re starting off with the bare minimum herd size due to finances – a couple of pregnant females with cria, which we’ll then breed from. Which brings us to the lads.

Stud males cost a fortune, which reflects their immense value to breeders: a stud male will ’share’ its genetic material to the sum of 50% to all cria born. So stud males have a significant influence on your herd’s genetics. It’s important to get the selection right.

So as a new alpaca owner how do you identify a quality male? One that has won shows is an obvious quality. But does ‘best in show’ really translate to best for your starter herd? The male that won that coveted first prize was only judged against its competitors on the day. And who knows? Maybe that winning stud looks great but doesn’t get down to business that well.

Maybe it’s producing a lot of fibre. Maybe its fibre characteristics are impressive (this is a whole other post waiting to happen, I’m learning all about this at the moment). But you must also look at the temperament – how does it act around other males and females? When it’s introduced to an open (erm, ‘receptive’) female, how does it act? Really you need a calm, self assured, confident lothario that knows what to do. What if the show winner uber fibre producing male is actually aggressive to females? Alpacas don’t do kinky, so a male should not start biting and scratching its new acquaintance.

It turns out there’s an established set of criteria for objectively assessing a stud male’s suitability. Every industry has its bible, and in the alpaca world it’s Eric Hoffman’s (hallowed be thy name) The Complete Alpaca Book. This is to the alpaca industry what John Seymore’s Guide to Self Sufficiency is to The Good Life generation. It includes the charts detailing physical characteristics, criteria for judging phenotype, genotype,  behaviour and sexual potency. So here we get to the title: if you had two male alpacas with similar genetics, behavioural and fibre characteristics to the point you couldn’t choose between them, go for sheer testicle size. Seriously: the bigger, the better.

Delve further into the murky world of male stud selection here. And a big thanks to Katy from Fairhope Alpacas for the picture of stud muffin Brutus’ Firecracker. Even the name is potent.

Although we’re aiming to establish a breeding alpaca herd, we’re not going wholesale into it immediately as there’s a huge risk that we won’t get it right initially; this risk is only exasperated by our status as urbanites inexperienced in rural life in general and livestock management in particular. I have an inkling there must be more to it than we saw in The Good Life.

Alpaca agistment – no land required!

Luckily with alpacas there’s an easy in-route: agistment. This is where you own alpaca(s) but it’s kept on an alpaca breeder’s farm. You pay for the ‘running’ costs such as vets bills, food etc.   But with this approach you can grow your herd without needing land, and then if you do get some land then you already have your starter herd. Here’s an example agistment service.

Research and build a network

We’re doing what we can to learn upfront by connecting with alpaca breeders on Twitter (try searching for ‘alpaca’ on Twitter), reading our way around alpaca websites and visiting local breeders. But still, nothing can prepare us for actually living that life.

Diversify

The key for us is multiple income streams. We spread risk this way. Adeline and I sat down and listed the available avenues for income generation based on our skills.  This is our list:

• the alpaca business – primarily selling alpacas and fibre, but also capitalising on our current careers working with the web by providing brand consultancy and usable websites for new and existing alpaca breeders.
• remote freelancing – during our time working in advertising agencies we have a lot of contacts for freelance web work. The key will be identifying what work we can do remotely as most of our contacts are UK-based.
• remote work through our web company www.webdesignpeople.net
• remote reiki attunements which is something I’ve done since 2002. I’m looking forward to having the time and energy to do more of this.
• photography and on-demand canvas printing themed for the alpaca and reiki websites.
• print and web work in the local area of NZ we end up in.

Between that lot we should generate enough income to avoid debt and hopefully gradually invest in alpacas. And it should also bring some well-needed balance to our currently one-sided lives.

So that’s the way it is for us. Hopefully it will be a solid enough foundation to gradually move over to full-time alpaca breeding.

Experienced alpaca breeders – how did you get started? It’s really useful to see how you got to where you are now and it’s great motivation for us newbies too! Plus it’ll be much-needed ammunition against my dad who thinks I’ve gone mad