A class of their own

In the first of a two part feature Ron Condon, a founding member of the Australian Alpaca Association, takes us on a journey to Peru where he meets legendary breeder Don Julio Barreda from the renowned Accoyo herd and selects “heart stopping” alpacas for the Shanbrooke Alpaca Stud.

Peru’s Altiplano is a harsh and barren place but its rare beauty is etched in my heart forever. My travels across the countryside have taken me to places few outsiders have ever seen. Along steep mountain ranges by roads no more than goat tracks.

Travelling eight hour days through rivers and over boulders sometimes perched precariously on the side of a mountain wondering which track to take. You are 5000 metres above sea level, the view is breathtaking and so is the air. Each day is exhausting but you continue on, determined to find that illusive alpaca, the one that makes your heart stop.

My wife Dianne and I first saw and fell in love with alpacas in the late 1980’s. We had a farm on the outskirts of Melbourne and had been breeding angora goats for the best part of a decade when fellow goat breeders Geoff and Nancy Halpin imported a small group of alpacas from Alaska— the first alpacas to touch Australian soil since Charles Ledger’s failed introduction in the mid 1800’s.

Some months later Cherie Bridges, who became the first secretary of the Australian Alpaca Association, advertised alpacas for sale in South Australia. Dianne and I jumped in the car and drove all night, deciding we would buy two. But when we saw the alpacas it was love at first sight so we borrowed more money from the bank and bought six. Within a year of buying our first alpacas from Cherie, we discovered Alan Hamilton and Roger and Clyde Haldane had a large shipment of alpacas quarantined in New Zealand waiting to be imported to Australia. I flew to New Zealand for a look and decided to buy another six.

Alan Hamilton, Don Julio and Ron Condon

Shanbrooke I'm A Dream

Our foundation alpacas were typical of those early imports from Chile, multi-coloured, long nosed and leggy. They were fine fleeced but lacking density and crimp. They were all that was available at the time but we could see their potential. (See photo of foundation Chilean female Shanbrooke I’m A Dream).

Ten years of breeding angora goats taught us the importance of buying the best we could afford and breeding to a type. If you have a clear and definite direction to work towards, your breeding program will advance much faster.

For Dianne and I, our vision of the perfect alpaca came from Rigoberto Calle Escobar’s book ‘Animal Breeding and Production of American Camelids’. Chapter 1 includes a photo of a stocky, well-proportioned female with a short wide muzzle and wool from her nose to her toes. She was Grand Champion Huacaya at Juliaca Fair in 1981 and to our eyes she stood in a class of her own. As Escobar describes, perfect harmony in form and function (see photo). This photo shaped the type of alpacas we would later breed. Further on in Escobar’s book, there are two reference photos depicting a group of “ideal” Suris and a group of “ideal” Huacayas. They are like peas in a pod with square frames, dense fleece and strong wide muzzles. On reflection, these alpacas were unmistakably Accoyo. As a novice alpaca breeder, Escobar’s book became my bible.

With a clear picture in our minds of what we wanted to breed, Dianne and I purchased a female from Roger and Clyde Haldane by the name of Purrumbete Showpiece. As her name suggests, Showpiece was a stylish, typey female with a dense and uniform fleece vastly different from the Chileans grazing our paddocks at the time. Showpiece bred us Shanbrooke Society Lass (sired by Purrumbete El Dorado), an exceptional female and consistent producer of champions. Society Lass became a donor in our first embryo transfer program and bred us 10 daughters and seven sons who were all certified or exported as working males.

Grand Champion Female Juliaca Fair

The following year, we bought another three females from Roger and Clyde, Purrumbete Sun Dial, her daughter Purrumbete Compass Rose and Purrumbete Flamingo Gold. We bred Flamingo Gold to Purrumbete Ledgers Dream and produced Shanbrooke High Society, who won Supreme Champion at the National Show in 1997 and later sold for a world record price of $190,000.

These four alpaca females transformed our herd and became the backbone of our breeding program. Their progeny won championships at every major show in the country. It was not until much later we discovered these females were from Don Julio Barreda’s famed Accoyo herd.

Most alpaca breeders have heard of Don Julio’s business cards— Purrumbete Highlander, El Dorado, Inti and Ledgers Dream, who were an enormous leap forward in quality. These influential males forever changed the course of the Australian alpaca industry. Their impact was so great that their names are still evident in pedigrees today. What is less well known is that these influential males were accompanied by a group of influential females, four of which catapulted the Shanbrooke name across the world.

Five years into our alpaca journey, (and well and truly hooked on these magical doe-eyed creatures), I was invited to select alpacas in Peru for Alan Hamilton and Cherie Bridges. I naively jumped at the opportunity. In those days, it was not an easy journey: 40 hours of non-stop travel from Melbourne to Lima via Los Angeles and Miami.

After spending six hours in Lima airport waiting for a connecting flight, I finally arrived in Arequipa. It was late in the evening and I was absolutely exhausted but still had another flight to catch early the next morning. After a brief but much needed sleep I departed Arequipa for Juliaca completely unaware of what was to come.

Juliaca is the biggest city in the south east region of Puno and sits at just under 4000 metres (12,500 ft) above sea level, 1500 metres higher than Arequipa. I had never travelled to high altitude before and was not aware of the need to acclimatise gradually. When we touched down in Juliaca I felt my chest tighten and my lungs beg for oxygen the moment the plane door opened. The next two weeks were spent travelling the countryside feeling like I had a bad hangover. To top it off, I developed a severe case of gastroenteritis and christened just about every chook pen and hole in the ground in Puno. In hindsight I was lucky not to have been hospitalised. An introduction to Peru I will never forget.

It was on one of these buying missions in the mid 1990s that I had a chance meeting with Don Julio Barreda at Ayaviri airport. I had not met Don Julio before but I knew of him from my alpaca Bible where Escobar refers to Don Julio as one of Peru’s most prestigious breeders.

US breeder Mike Safley – whose admiration for Don Julio and his alpacas was, as I found out later, well deserved – also wrote of a man who, from an early age, set about redesigning the alpaca. Don Julio had a vision- 20 pounds (9kg) of fleece, 20 micron, every year, every alpaca. And after 50 years of rigorous genetic selection Don Julio was, pardon the pun, within spitting distance of his goal.

In 1995, Mike published a fleece test from Tulaco a typical male from the Plantel Accoyo herd. At two years of age Tulaco cut 14 (6.5kg) pounds of 19.7 micron fleece. (See Tulaco histogram from Mike Safley). The average fleece weight for alpacas in Australia at the time would have been no more than two kilograms. Don Julio had well and truly redesigned the alpaca. This was a man I had to meet.

By luck/chance/fate, call it what you will, I was waiting for a flight at Ayaviri airport when I noticed an elderly man who looked very much like Don Julio. Although I had only seen photos of Don Julio, I was sure it was him. I could scarcely believe it. I was star struck but eventually gathered enough composure to approach the man asking: “Are you Don Julio Barreda?’ His reply “yes” was the beginning of my Accoyo journey.

In part two, to be published in October, we follow Ron as he is offered the opportunity to select “stand out” alpacas from the Plantel line kept by Don Julio to produce Accoyo herd sires.

Tulaco Peru

This histogram is from Tulaco, a typical male in the Accoyo Plantel herd. He sheared 14 pounds of fleece