We are excited to announce that we have recently purchased joint ownership of the Alcazar Suri Stud.The Alcazar Suri Stud is known for specialising in pure white suri, together with our new partners, Ian and Fiona Vanderbeek, of Birrong Suri Alpacas, we will be maintaining the Alcazar herd as an elite white pure suri herd. We feel greatly honoured to have had this opportunity. For more information about this sensational new venture, click on the link to our Alcazar Suri Stud article, under information on this page.

We have just returned from a fabulous few days at the 2010 National Show and Auction in Tamworth. We had a great time enjoying the very good company of other breeders and admiring the beautiful suris on show. But the icing on the cake for us was a first place fleece ribbon for our co-owned ( with Ian and Angela Preuss of Surilana)stud male Surilana Donaldo, for his second fleece. We are extremley pleased with the overall show results for this fleece.The first cria sired by Donaldo is now due any day.

Our co-owned stud male, Surilana Donaldo, had success earlier this week at the Brisbane Royal Show with his second fleece. The fleece won first place in the white adult suri fleece class and then went on to be awarded champion suri fleece, needless to say, we are very plesed with these results.

Since the launch of our website, we have been delighted with the overall feedback recieved to date, thank you to those that have given it to us. Especially pleasing has been the number of people commenting on the ethereal feel of the site, as we feel that is the essence of our stud name and of course the fact that suris are just divine. We are very grateful to both our web designer and logo designer for capturing what we wanted so much. Links can be found to both these businesses on our links page.

Now we have the first Shangrilah bred females for sale, we decided it was time to have our inaugural web site developed. We would like to thank David Carse of Waterfall Designs for giving us the benefit of his expertise, creativity and professionalism and for putting up with our various demands and questions, he has been a delight to work with. We would also like to thank Michael Keen of Cool Country Consulting for his initial input. Finally, we would also like to make mention and give a huge thank you to our much appreciated white suri mentors, Ian and Fiona Vanderbeek of Birrong Suri Alpacas. Although there are many other breeders who have given us great assistance and readily shared their knowledge and whom we are also grateful to, Ian and Fiona have watched over our progress with white suri with keen interest and have guided and assisted us in too many ways to mention here, we are extremely grateful to them and treasure the friendship we have now developed with them.Also special thanks to Peter of Bellawood Alpacas for his advice and assistance in getting us started.

At last, the heavens have opened again at Shangrilah! Over the past week we have received rainfall of nearly 80ml, the first decent rain we have received in 6 months. We can even see some green pick growing ( as can the alpacas of course) despite the cold conditions and frost this time of year. We have been in drought conditions at Shangrilah for well over 12 months and have received for several consecutive yeas below average rainfall for our area; and had never seen our property so moisture depleted. On top of this, we endured a major bushfire last November which burned through about 60% of our land, so excitement perhaps is an understated word to describe our elation this week. Our suris our now shining in the post rain sunlight just as we like to see them, given they have now all had a good wash, needless to say there has been lots of sunbaking after the rain. Here’s hoping the change in weather can also coincide with a change in the gender of cria born, we have had one female out of 13 births this past birthing season!!

Alpacas are our passion. We have prepared an article to introduce you to Alpacas, a little bit of history, farming in Australia, alpaca types and a glossary of terms we use on this website.

About Alpacas

This article covers common misconceptions about Suri Alpacas. Covering areas such as suitability to Australia, manageability, fleece, and expense.

Dispelling Myths About Suri

In this article we go over the different genetic terms and what they mean for a breeding programme.

Suri Cross Breeding

We are now very proud and overwhelmingly delighted to be able to say that, in partnership, we now own and jointly operate the Alcazar Suri Stud, with Ian and Fiona Vanderbeek of Birrong Suri Alpacas.

Alcazar Suri Stud