The potential new entrant into the alpaca industry will be confused as to why it seems to matter from which country an alpaca originates. ‘Pure Peruvian’ is a term much banded about in all the developing alpaca enterprises throughout the world. Why should that term have some form of marketing cachet? What is meant by ‘100% pure Accoyo’? Why do some breeders prefer to go to Australia or the USA rather than South America? This is a minefield of confusion, marketing hype and general ignorance.

The bulk of the world’s alpaca population lives in Peru. There have always been alpacas in Chile and in Bolivia but the bulk of those were based in the areas adjacent to Peru because historically both national borders, while they have existed, have been almost an irrelevance to the indigenous population. Neither of these two countries have a significant alpaca industry, as the centre of all things alpaca has traditionally been found in and around the cities of Puno, Cusco and Arequipa in Southern Peru. When alpaca imports became big business during the last quarter of the 20^th century, it was generally found that exporting from Chile was infinitely easier than exporting from Peru, in general terms this situation still pertains.

The bulk of alpacas being bred in Peru vary not one jot from animals in any other South American country. Their qualities are not particularly special and the majority of alpaca farming is under-resourced and not geared for the improvement of the herd through selective breeding. However there are certain breeders, very few and very select, who over the years have developed a herd improvement programme which is impressive and successful.

One of the best known is Don Julio Barreda’s Accoyo herd, which has been marketed very heavily throughout the world. He has been practising selective breeding since 1945, including line breeding, and his stock have been exported and promoted in many leading herds in the First World. Also very highly regarded are the herds of Rural Alianza, a Peruvian Agricultural Co-operative and the largest breeders anywhere in the world. In addition there are various breeders who are highly regarded in Peru but who have not been lucky enough to be the subject of massive promotion in the ‘West’ – many of these breeders are regular winners of Peruvian championships as a result of their selective breeding over many generations. No doubt amongst these animals there is a valuable genetic strength based on years of selective breeding.

Many animals have been sold into the ‘West’ from the prestigious herds of Peru. However do not believe that because it comes from Peru it has come from one of these prestigious herds. 

What a buyer is trying to achieve is to find an alpaca that has the right genetic make-up to grow good quality fibre in quantity. To assess that in a practical way, i.e. without recourse to complex laboratory tests, is a skill developed by only a relatively few people. It becomes much more difficult to get a full assessment of an animal’s qualities if it has not been allowed to reach its full genetic potential, which is only fully realised when it has been properly nourished. In Peru the grazing is of such poor quality it is difficult to find alpacas that have reached their full genetic strength. They are too often in a state known as ‘starved fine’ – that is the fibre is fine because they have not been sufficiently well nourished for the fibre to develop to its full potential. Such an animal, without the genetics to produce fine fibre, arriving in any country with reasonably good grazing will quickly reach its full potential and may well therefore ‘blow out’ in its fibre quality.

In addition to the physical assessment of an animal there is another way of assessing its likely potential – that is through its bloodlines. Even if you buy an animal recently imported from Peru you will not have any idea of the qualities of its ancestry. If however you buy from the First World alpaca enterprises you will nearly always have the breeding history laid out in front of you. Certain breeders in the USA, Australia and Canada - amongst others – have brought in stock from South American prestigious herds and they have over the generations learnt which animals produce the best progeny and have optimised on those. Animals which have gone on to disappoint have been rejected and are not kept as part of their breeding programmes. They have had all the heartache of discovering which animals were not capable of breeding good quality offspring. In addition, although their individual herds may be relatively small in comparison with some of the Peruvians, they have had access to a much wider gene pool because they are free to select from other breeders’ herd sires if they want to select a particular sire’s quality to suit the dam.

However you will no doubt continue to hear for many years of the special qualities of ‘Pure Peruvian’ even, as can be found in some breeders’ marketing, when the animal was born in the USA or in the UK. It matters not where the animal came from – it does matter what its bloodlines are and what genetic potential can be inherited from those bloodlines.