Burren Alpacas steal national show at Tullamore

BURREN Alpaca Stud, first importers of alpacas to Ireland 10 years ago, celebrated this anniversary by winning both the supreme champion and reserve champion awards at the Alpaca Association of Ireland National Show recently. Run in conjunction with the Tullamore Show, the competition between alpaca classes was a big attraction for many of the 60,000 people to visit the one-day event.

The gold medal-winning supreme champion was a three-year-old female alpaca, Burren Achill Queen, who just pipped her seven-year-old male runner-up Soprano of Burren to the top spot. Achill Queen, a daughter of top Australian sire, Jolimont Warrior, was bred by Burren Alpaca to advance fibre quality in its herd. Her competitor, Soprano of Burren provided tough competition. A former reserve champion in the Australian National Alpaca show and now a top sire to the Burren Alpaca herd, Soprano is available for a limited number of stud matings to other owners in Ireland.
Burren Alpaca is based in Murrough, near Blackhead a few miles from Ballyvaughan. Founded by Damien Dyar and the late Anna May Driscoll, it has forged a leading role in the development of an alpaca industry in Ireland. Mr Dyar stated that the achievement of the supreme place at the show demonstrated that Burren’s breeding strategy was developing along the right lines. Burren Alpaca, he said, had consistently, over the past 10 years, bred for quality and had imported world-class males to acquire the genetic base to create a fine-type alpaca fleece.
At the show, Mr Dyar called on the Government to upgrade its support for a fleece industry in Ireland. He said that public policy could start by ceasing to think of alpaca as exotic, which would remain a rarity and put some muscle and focus behind helping to support the nascent alpaca fibre industry. Mr Dyar complimented the organisers of the Tullamore Show for their willingness to see the potential of the breed and for supporting this year’s Alpaca Association of Ireland National Show. He stated that the AAI is committed to fostering the breed in Ireland and has now established a National Alpaca Register to help breeders and buyers in choosing alpacas with an appropriate pedigree to meet their breeding strategies.
Judging this year was by Rob Bettison, a British Alpaca Society-approved judge who complimented the Alpaca Association of Ireland on the standard of alpacas presented at this, its third annual show. Mr Bettison said that the overall growth of the alpaca industry in Ireland is strongly tied to the quality of alpaca presented and he judged that the standard now present in the country based on this show is surprisingly high. He noted that the industry is at an earlier stage here than in the UK, Australia, the US or New Zealand but stated that Irish alpaca breeders should be aware of the standards now being achieved by continental breeders, who are rapidly advancing the alpaca industry across Europe.
Mr Bettison said there is still a real opportunity for Western European countries to progress a fine fibre industry with alpaca as the base. He pointed out that the initiative in terms of sheep wool has been lost to Australia and other countries over 100 years ago but that this was not an inevitable condition, merely one that had been created by a focus solely on the meat capability of sheep. Alpaca were an opportunity to take back the initiative for a quality fibre industry here and he pointed out that craft spinners and knitters, once aware of alpaca, are very keen to use it repeatedly.