After buying a small block just out of Wellsford, Val Bushell decided she needed something ‘different’ to run on it. 

After reading an article on alpacas, and while waiting for her house to be built, she decided to take a trip to the Waikato “just to have a look.”

“I went down on Christmas Eve 2003 just to have a look and bought two weathers on the spot.”

With the house still to be completed, Val left her alapacas with the vendor for a year – making regular trips down to see them and before long had made the decision to have a look at a female with a five and a half month male cria at foot.

“It was called a three in one package because she was pregnant as well. I was only going to look that time as well but I ended up buying,” Val told Rural Living when we visited her recently.

Since then Val has become hooked on alpacas and has set about building up the successful Silverhill Alpacas stud dedicated to breeding fine but densely fleeced coloured alpacas. While Val’s stud is made up of Huacaya alpacas, plans are underway to breed a small herd of coloured Suri alpacas which will be known as the Nonsuch Herd. (Huacayas have the typical teddy bear like fleece while Suris have a longer dreadlock type fleece.) In the meantime, Val’s focus is on improving fleece quality in her coloured animals to parallel that of white and light fawn alpacas. 

“To help achieve this we are using high quality white or light fawn males over our coloured females in the expectation that they will pass on the fineness, density and crimp definition but retain the colour from the dam. Luckily in alapacas it only takes one or two generations to get improvement.”

A regular on the alpaca show circuit, Val has an impressive collection of champion ribbons as testament to the quality of her animals.  

“The idea is to give our stud a high profile and it lets us  gauge how our breeding programme is progressing when comparing our alpacas to the others in the show ring.”

Unlike many farm animals, alpacas are not prone to fly strike or footrot which has made them a great animal for Val to begin her farming life with.

“I have no farming experience but I’ve found them easy. It’s just a case of common sense really. They are susceptible to facial eczema though and people don’t always realise that what is a low spore count for sheep and cattle is a high one for alpacas. You also have to be aware of rye grass staggers and look for it.”

Val has found that most people coming to her to buy alpacas are looking for a pet rather than a breeding animal.

“People want easy care, which they are. Also they can be handled by one person – they’re only about 80 kilos. They have soft padded feet so they don’t do the same damage to pasture – and if you get kicked by one it’s not a big deal.  But the best thing about them is their individual personalities.”

To show us what she meant, Val took us out to the yards and began calling. Within moments we were surrounded by a mass of fawn, white, chocolate, and brown teddy bear faced alapacas.  After checking out the visitors and deciding they were of no consequence they went about the business of their surprise snack – snickering and snorting at one another while jostling for the surprise snack Val had brought out for them. Within minutes distinct personalities were obvious and the entire experience was not unlike being in a kindergarten room at afternoon tea.

The biggest challenge facing Val currently is not being able to be full time with her beloved animals.

“Ideally I would love to be at home and be a full time alpaca breeder but it’s just not possible sadly.”

If her commitment and passion of the past five years is anything to go by – it won’t be long before it is.