WestWool Alpaca farm is owned and operated by Veterinarian Dr Michael Anthony, who has been active in the alpaca industry since 1993. A lot has changed since then and it might be helpful to outline how things have progressed over the years.
Our first animals were bought from the first Peruvian alpaca sale held in North America. It was the first importation of Peruvian alpacas ever and the sale was held in Michigan. We bought two females at this sale; one of them was Benatton and she turned out to be one of the best producing females for our farm. It was at this sale we first heard of Don Julio Berreda and the famous Accoyo herd. Accoyo was a closed herd and its animals had dominated the alpaca industry in Peru for years. Accoyo males were said to be prepotent; that is they tended to be more reliable in producing offspring of similar quality to themselves. This made a lot of sense to us since no outside bloodlines we allowed into the Accoyo herd from inception. The Royal herd of Accoyo was known for their size and for dense heavy fleeces. We bought two Full Accoyo females from the 1995 import (see Peruvian Journey) and followed that up with the purchase of a Full Accoyo male, Juliaca. One of these females Viracocha produced Cromwell, a superior male, who has given us outstanding production females (see Show Results).
The next turning point was in 2001 when we heard that Harold Berkholtz of the Okanagan Alpaca Company was holding a sale of Peruvian alpacas. This herd was from an importation of Peruvian alpacas into Canada owned by three groups. One group was the Hamilton group from Australia. The second group was Canadian and the third group was the Inca group from Peru. The Inca group in Peru is the owner of Rural Allianza, the largest Alpaca farm in Peru. This herd is noted for the fineness of its alpaca fleeces. We knew that the quality of this herd would be second to none so we decided to attend the sale and look for a superior male. What transpired was we came away with not only males but also a group of about ten females. These have turned out to be exceptional animals and have turned our attention more to fleece fineness and uniformity of fleece. We started crossing these females with our full Accoyo male Cromwell and ended up with heavy fleeced fine fibered animals like Pandora and Phoebe (see results).
The next phase started when we heard Kathy Nilsson was selling her herd and her main sire MMR Entero. This male was owned by Hans Buhrman of Mountain Meadows Alpaca Ranch and was picked out by Janie Hicks of Australia as having an elite fleece; the type of fleece she was breeding for in Australia. We liked this male for his great character of fleece, his low micron and especially his low CV. We bought Entero in partnership with Sharon and Ron Louthan and have not been disappointed. His offspring have done very well at the shows (see results) with his son WestWool's Alvaro taking the Reserve Champion white male at the Canadian National Futurity this year, 2009.
Our other main male OACL Mario was one of the males we bought at Harold Berkholtz's sale. This is a male that has remained fine and produces a long staple length and complements the fleece characteristics of the Entero offspring. We are still working on these crosses.
