Top national awards for Burren alpacas

TWO alpaca from a North Clare farm won top awards at the Alpaca Association of Ireland National Show held in Belurgan County Louth recently.
Burren Alpaca Stud won both the supreme champion title and reserve title. The supreme champion was a two-year-old female alpaca, Burren Victoria, who beat male runner-up Burren Auzdano. Victoria, a daughter of top Burren sire, Burren, was bred by Burren Alpaca to advance fibre quality in its herd.
Based at Blackhead, Ballyvaughan, Burren Alpaca was founded by Damien Dyar and the late Anna May Driscoll and has forged a leading role in the development of an alpaca industry in Ireland.
Shirley Bettison, a British Alpaca Society-approved judge, complimented the Alpaca Association of Ireland on the standard of alpacas presented at its sixth annual show.
Ms Bettison said the growth of the alpaca industry in Ireland is strongly tied to the quality of alpaca presented and she judged the standard now present in the country based on the show is high. She also noted the industry is at an earlier stage in Ireland than in the UK, Australia, the US or New Zealand but stated Irish alpaca breeders should be aware of the standards now being achieved by continental breeders, who are rapidly advancing the alpaca industry across Europe.
Ciarán Dyar, who presented the Burren show team at Belurgan, said the achievement of the supreme and reserve placing demonstrated Burren’s breeding strategy is consistently on the right lines.
Burren Alpaca, he said, had over the past 13 years bred for quality and had imported world-class males to acquire the genetic base to create a fine-type alpaca fleece. He called once again on the Government to upgrade its support for a fleece industry in Ireland.
He said public policy could start by ceasing to think of alpaca as an ‘exotic’ that would remain a rarity and put focus on helping to support the nascent alpaca fibre industry. Mr Dyar said the Alpaca Association of Ireland National Show continues to foster the breed in Ireland and had now established a national alpaca register to help breeders and buyers in choosing alpacas with an appropriate pedigree to meet their breeding strategies.