Having made the decision to give up full time corporate lives in 2002 we considered the usual range of farming enterprises, before attending a seminar for potential alpaca breeders and making the commitment to establishing our own stud.

The first prerequisite was a property suited to the needs of the alpaca and we were fortunate to find “Birrong”, a 100-acre farm situated in its own secluded valley at Canyonleigh in the Southern Highlands of NSW. The climate, topography and native pasture of this area are ideally suited to alpaca breeding but the property had been neglected and was in need of major restorative work. This has given us the opportunity to plan the layout of the farm to suit our particular needs in terms of fencing, laneways, shedding and pasture improvement. This is one of the areas in which we are happy to assist new breeders wanting to learn how best to put in place their own infrastructure.

From the outset we believed that to succeed we must focus on one type and colour. Looking to the longer term future of the alpaca industry in general, and the fleece industry in particular, we made a decision to focus on what we strongly believe will become the top-end niche in the world alpaca fibre market—white suri.

We have a particular interest in the genetics of alpaca breeding and, while searching for our foundation animals it quickly became apparent that good quality white suri females are scarce, with many of those that are available having a significant amount of colour in their background. For this reason we decided to purchase not only some first-cross suri females but also some white huacaya females, with many generations of white breeding, from which to develop our own line of white suris. Our herd now includes a range of white suris from first-cross to full suri, together with a small number of white huacayas which we continue to use to produce good quality first-crosses.

We have Q-Alpaca status and all our animals receive supplementary feeding twice daily, ensuring not only that they are well-fed and healthy, but also that they are used to human contact. We pride ourselves on breeding animals that are easy to work with and all cria are handled from an early age and halter trained by the time they are weaned.