Whilst white suri is our passion and it will remain so, one of us has always admired black suri. Last year in a totally random and spontaneous moment one of us suddenly purchased 2 black females! Because this was not a planned move, soon found out that homozygous black suri males are a fairly rare commodity, after some searching we were fortunate to source a couple available for outside matings. See our cria gallery for the result, we now have our first black baby, Morticia, a blue black female BC2 suri.She looks very odd amongst our nearly all white herd but we are delighted with the result.
While we have no plans to move into black suris in a big way, given the success of this first mating we will continue with a little black breeding "on the side", our hobby line of sorts.
Morticia is not only the first ever deliberatley bred coloured cria for us, but also the first winter baby we have had. We have 2 more to come any time. We have always avoided winter births, given our frequent winter minus temperatures on the New England Tablelands, but thought we would experiment a little given the sucess our partners in the Alcazar herd have had with this, so hoping like them it results in higher weaning weights as if it is a typical year, the cria will have the new spring and summer feed at the time they need it most. Demi, Morticia's dam, certainly birthed with ease and did not have to endure the heat of some of the spring and summer births, nor the flies that are around that time of year.We have double coated Morticia at night but that is the only extra attention she has required, and even the summer cria require coating if the weather turns cold or it rains.
So, all up, a very successful start to our 2 little experiemnts this winter!!

Summerhill Silken Zonzo, owned by Sandra and Charlie vella of Sanchavel Alpacas on the NSW mid north coast has been having a summer sojourn with us. Zonzo is an outstanding young stud male and we feel very honoured to have been given the opportunity to have him temporarily entrusted to our care and to be joined with some of our girls. Zonzo has had an impressive show career to date in both animal and fleece classes. He also has an impressive array of genetics including Big Kahuna, Kahuna, Bosisto and Amador.
Zonzo is standing at stud while with us and his visit will not be for much longer, so time is running out to access Zonzo in the New England.

We dont do a lot of showing at this stage, due to distance, time and competing priorities in our hectic lives. However we do try to support our local show, the New England Alpaca show, and in the past year we entered in to the Royal Queensland Show in August 13 for the first time. To date we have shown more of our fleeces at various shows than our animals. Whilst our showing activity has not been extensive, we are very pleased to be able to say that every animal and fleece we have ever entered has always come home with a ribbon and in some cases broad ribbons. So we thought it was time we do a bit of show and tell about our showing activity and have added a section in our gallery pages to showcase our successes. We will be adding more photos soon and will focus on shots from the previous 12 months.

Like many others across Australia at present we are experiencing horrendously hot and dry conditions as we start 2014. Our animals are all coping thank goodness and we are treating them to hose downs on the particularly hot days, especially our pregnant girls.
This past week saw the last of our cria from the past years spring & summer matings hit the gound, we are quite impressed with many in this batch, especially the quality we are seeing in some of our crosses. We have also welcomed some lovely pure solid white suri females.Since the hot dry weather arrived mid December we have had only males born,, our boys were certainly firing the male arrows this time last year!We are amazed and pleased given this dry and dusty weather the level of lustre we are seeing in most of our cria.Check out our latest cria gallery page to see our new bubs.
We now look forward to the February birth of a cria from a solid white suri girl we purchased last year at the Esterlina Suri auction - Jingana Athene, who seems to be growing larger by the day with her baby who"s sire is Esterline El Tariq, a son of the magnificent Kurrawa Tariq. Beyond that, the end of February should see the first of our autumn cria starting to arrive.
We are currently busy at present getting ready for our collection and baling day as part of the Rumplestiltskin suri fleece project. Now in its second year, the project, in partnership with New Zealand and Australian suri breeders, is looking very promising for advancing the suri fleece industry and feedback has been very positve for the future of this elite luxurious fibre. It is not too late to contribute to the bales and join in the collection days,even if you only have one fleece, our Northern NSW day is being held next Sunday 26/01/14.Dont hesitate to contact us if you are interested.

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