Northwest Alpacas has assembled a group of vicuña colored alpacas. Their fawn to brown fleeces and light underbellies and chests distinguishes them. Each of these females has the tell tale look of the vicuna, some have heads reminiscent of the wild vicuna.

In 1998 these females were very fine, averaging 19.47 microns at an average of two years of age. But what is even more impressive is that 5 years later they average 23.74 microns and have a 21.12 Co-efficient of Variation. Several of these females are less than 22 microns and one is 16.9 microns, which at their age is phenomenal. We think they may produce some extremely fine cria when mated to our finer Studmaster™ males. If you are interested in color and believe as we do that fine fibered animals will become more valuable over time you may want to add a few of these girls to your herd.

We are not suggesting that they are vicuña or even that they have recent vicuña blood flowing in their veins. The criteria that we used to assemble these animals was a combination of their color pattern and fiber fineness. We were inspired to put this group together by Don Julio Barreda’s breeding experiment, which is described below.

“Having just received Argonoticias magazine, Barreda noticed an article about the Peruvian priest, Father Cabrera. He loved the story of the priest who had spent the middle of the Eighteenth Century creating a large herd of paco, vicuña (half alpaca, half vicuña crossbreeds) in Macusani in an effort to get the fine fleece of the vicuña with the domestication of the alpaca. In the 1930s, as a young man, Barreda would visit the paco vicuña herd that was the legacy of Father Cabrera’s work at the Hacienda Cconchatanca, just three kilometers down the valley from Macusani (Hacienda Cconchatanca is now part of the Rural Allianza Macusani.) Most of Father Cabrera’s animals were dark brown or coffee-colored, not the coppery gold of the vicuna. They had fallen out of favor when white became the alpaca color chosen by the market. Barreda remembered the hacienda’s criadores, or handlers, who had lassoed the pacos which lay down, spit, and had to be dragged to their corral. Even the esteemed Father had not tamed them.

The veterinarian at the hacienda had confided to young Barreda that these animals would slowly have to disappear.

“Why?” Barreda had asked, feeling a sadness come over him. “They are not as productive as sheep and they are very difficult to move, always returning to their personal territory,” the vet said. “Why should we spend money on animals that only shear three pounds every two years? Besides” he continued, “they produce little meat, maybe eighty pounds if you are lucky.”

Barreda remembered with native pride that Father Cabrera had crossbred these animals many years before Gregor Mendel had crossbred his peas. For his groundbreaking work, the government of Ramon Castilla had ordered that Cabrera’s picture be placed in the Peruvian national museum in August of 1845; that predated Mendel’s work by 20 years.

But Mendel had done something Father Cabrera had neglected to do. He had left his work in writing. By 1900 the science of genetics, based on Mendel’s crossbreeding experiment was fully established. All that was left of Cabrera’s work was the foundation of a stone fence at the edge of Macusani, which was called “vicuña cancha” (vicuña corral) and the bofidales, low-lying wet areas in the high desert valleys where the occasional alpaca/vicuña hybrid could be seen quenching its thirst.

Barreda recalled the Incan myth of the princess of the inner world who fell in love with the alpaca shepherd in the outer world; the only door between the two worlds was a lake. The princess’ father, a god, gave the newlyweds an alpaca herd from the inner world on the condition that they would take good care of the animals. When one small alpaca died, because of a lack of care, the princess dove back into the lake from which she had come taking the alpaca herd with her.

Thinking about Cabrera and the mythic history of the alpaca led Barreda to think about crossbreeding vicunas and alpacas. But Barreda, who was 45 years old at the time, realized he did not have time to recreate the Peruvian priest’s experiment. So he decided to take another path: he would create a herd of vicuna-colored alpacas, which he would choose from the B herd. He would pay attention only to the color of the animals he selected and their fiber fineness. What he hoped was that the vicuña color was genetically linked to the fineness of the fiber.

He selected 160 females and was initially pleased by the cria, whose fleeces were fine as silk. But the color varied and the dreaded allocas and checches began to creep back into the herd. Given his dislike of pintos, he could not continue the project when some of the cria offended his eye. Later, he would again begin breeding for fineness, using only white animals for stud, and not breeding for the vicuña color.”

Excerpted from: Alpacas: Synthesis of a Miracle

Click here to view the Vicuña collection.