Although alpacas have become a consuming passion for us, like the majority of alpaca farmers, alpacas are still a part time occupation. Fran runs a secondhand Bookshop in nearby Hornby (here's the plug for Hornby Books 385 Main South Road Christchurch Ph 03 349 5413 if you are after a good read or a hard to find book). David is a plant breeder and his knowledge of genetics, breeding systems, and selection technique is put to use after hours in the alpaca stud.

We live on a small farmlet just south of Christchurch and have been involved in breeding and showing dairy goats for 25 years until the captive holiday milkers inconveniently left home to have lives of their own. We needed some livestock with a challenge, lesser input than milking goats, personality, didn't need major farm layout and fencing changes and offered a return on investment. Alpacas fill all of these requirements and in addition we have extended further by getting into processing the fibre.

From the initial purchase of two pregnant coloured Chilean females we have moved into the breeding of both Huacaya and Suri types and have also limited our colour range to predominantly white and light fawn. This is done to achieve sufficient amount of fibre to process economically. See the page about our alpacas for further details.

All of our pastures are a mix of the newly developed AR1 ryegrass and cocksfoot plus clover which means no ryegrass staggers but provides good nutrition all year round. Despite claims that good pasture will result in excessive micron 'blow out', we have found that this has not been the case and we can grow large framed alpacas with fine fibre.

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