They come from where?

Alpacas have been bred for their fleece for almost 6,000 years by the indigenous peoples of Peru, Chile and Bolivia. During the Inca reign in Peru, alpaca fleece was a fibre reserved exclusively for the royal household and the aristocracy. However the Spanish conquests disrupted forever the highly developed breeding programs of the Inca. The alpacas were moved up onto the spartan pastures of the alti-plano where the majority of farms are based today. Over the resulting 300 years alpacas were farmed in huge herds rounded up once every two years and sheared rather like the wild native animal the Vicuna. It is only in the last 50 years or so that Peru has begun again to seriously develop the quality of its alpaca output by instituting again very strict selective breeding programs, which has improved their native stock tenfold.

The modern alpaca is a high altitude animal, which survives on a sparse and varied diet and extremes of temperature. The harsh sunlight with a high ultra violet quotient being replaced by sub zero temperatures during the night. Alpaca is a dry fibre containing very little lanolin, its waterproofing qualities are created by the density of the fleece itself.

So how do they do in a temparate climate?

Alpacas adapt readily to our mixed climate, although they do not like day upon day of rain and begin to look eventually like old four legged dishcloths. However the fleece dries very quickly and soon they are back to their fluffy selves. Special care has to be taken with newborn cria delivered into our most extreme conditions. The application of an insulated coat and the removal of mother and baby to a dry shed usually avoids any unnecessary fatalities.