In 1998 when we sold 2500 Ewes and 150 head of Cattle, and used the money to purchase nine suri alpaca, my farming friends thought I had gone start raving mad. I made the comment then (to cover myself in the case of failure) that it was only money. I can now report that the venture has been successful beyond our wildest dreams. The really exciting bit is the number of Alpaca breeders who now share the vision.

We were not the first people in New Zealand to have the suri, be we sure felt like Pioneers. In the early 90's there were quite a few of these rare alpaca imported from Chile and then subsequently exported again. George Davies had a young suri male in Mosgiel that had been bred from two huacaya parents, Murray Bruce of 'Caithness Farm', Waimate, had a couple of animals that had a suri look about them, and I was told of a wether in Southland but had never discovered its whereabouts. Two New Zealand breeders owned suris in Australia – Murray King from Stoke, near Nelson, and Chris & Glenn Swanson from Tauranga.
 

Where do we start to find information on a rare breed of animal so you know what you are looking at when you see it? We started our suri expedition in South Australia with Wendy Jones, who at the time was one of three qualified suri judges in Australia. Two days with Wendy and I was really confused and believe it or not I am still confused today (more on this later). No one knows very much about this rare camelid. Where did it originate? Is it an alpaca with different fibre? Is it a different species or sub species? The jury is still out on the many unanswered questions. Advice has been obtained from South America, and today we judge the suri in the same way as it is judged in those countries, but even they cannot tell you the history behind this wonderful animal. To confuse the issue, llamas can have suri fibre also, which may suggest that suri is a fibre gene only, or are these llamas a result of cross mating?

I will refer in this article to the true rather that the pure suri. This is deliberate because I don't believe we know yet what a pure suri looks like, but we do have knowledge about the suri fibre gene. You will often hear the term homozygous suri referred to by breeders, which means in the simplest form, the animal does not carry the huacaya fibre gene, and when mated with a huacaya or suri, will produce a suri cria. The suri fibre gene is dominant. Heterozygous suri means the animal carries the fibre genes of both the suri and huacaya.
 

I have a feeling that this animal, although called an alpaca, and therefore having to conform to the alpaca ideals, is different in many ways to the huacaya. Very early on in our breeding programme we noticed that the suri cria were heavier than the huacaya, not bigger, just heavier.Ian Nelson of Taupo also noticed this in his first crop of F1 (first cross suri/huacaya) suri cria.

Other clients of ours have noticed this also, and many breeders have commented that the suri can look obese as a mature animal. I think there is a logical explanation for this. The suri carries very long fibre along its backbone, therefore it has compensated or evolved to put more muscle or meat on its back, so that it survives the cold temperatures in the Andes. This means that the standard condition scoring of Alpaca does not apply to most suri.The majority of suri are flat across the back, and you do not feel the backbone until the animal is in very poor condition. Likewise most look over far or obese. My way of assessing the condition of our animals is to feel the ribs to determine how much cover or condition is being carried. This difference in conformation is a plus for us, as it means that the suri is very hardy under our conditions, and may of our suri cria are born at 10 kg or more.
 

Provided no genetic faults are apparent, then the ears of an alpaca (their size and shape) should not be very relevant. The ability to hear should be a major consideration, but rarely gets a mention. Ears on the suri, however, over recent times have been the subject of considerable debate. We see many true suri with larger and rounded tipped ears, not spear shaped as in the huacaya, or large and banana shaped like the llama. Is this a sign of a different camelid? Did the Inca make a silk purse from a suri ear? My major concern is that the suri ear will have to conform to what we understand to be an alpaca ear i.e. spear shaped.

We have both breeds of alpaca at Homestead Farm, they are farmed together, and I find it interesting to note the similarities and differences between the two breeds. Cross breeding is giving us, and our clients, interesting results. We caution breeders interested in cross breeding, that the first cross does not always deliver the lustre, staple length or lock architecture of a true suri, so it is important to return the F1 female to superior suri males. We do not regard males from the first cross to have much value as herd sires, as their genetic background would be unreliable. We are fortunate that two of our original males were homozygous suris. These males have produced many white and coloured suri cria when mated to coloured huacaya dams. Our true suri females (mainly white and light fawn) will continue to be mated to homozygous suri males only. We have two families with three generations of females on our farm, and with good male selection look forward to breeding one day a suri we can call pure.