Business Rural Autumn 2021

4 | Breeding decisions, Virginia Wright RURAL PEOPLE » Shamarra Alpacas: Anya & Keith Walkington A wide range of knitwear is available at Shamarra Alpacas farm store. A nya and Frank Walkington moved with their 60 alpacas from a small farm in Wainui, north of Auckland, to Banks Peninsula in the South Island in 2011. Encroaching subdivisions provided the final push, but a readiness for change and in particular knowing that the climate was so much more suitable for their alpacas were the main drivers. “Alpacas originated in the Altiplano, the highlands of Peru, which has a very dry climate,”explains Anya. “Because they have such a dense fleece alpacas do better in a low humidity area, a bit like merinos.” The additional space on their new 100 acre farm allowed for the expansion they wanted and now, ten years later their herd has grown to 170. What was three bare paddocks used for beef cattle has now been made fit for purpose. “We put laneways in which made it user friendly for handling” says Anya, ‘and moving animals around. You don’t use dogs with alpacas, you pretty much call or whistle and they come along and we knew from our experience up north how to set it up to make moving them around as stress free as possible for them and for us.” They knew they wanted to build their herd up not only for breeding but for fleece production; in fact the two goals are closely entwined. “Because we’ve done a lot of fleece processing in order to sell the end product which is alpaca knitwear, we know exactly what the end product needs to feel like, so we take that into account with our breeding decisions,”explains Anya. “So we want fleece that is fine – fineness is an important aspect of alpaca; uniform in micron, and because we only process natural colours and don’t dye our fleeces we also breed for colour. We concentrate on whites through fawns and beiges, to brown.” Having moved to the south and made the decision to rely solely on their alpacas for income, they were quick to realise that their alpacas lent themselves to Agritourism as a potential source of additional income. What began as a luxury bed and breakfast which they made room for in the house they built on the farm, morphed over time into farm tours which began almost accidentally as a result of an opportunity provided by the Christchurch earthquakes. The Walkingtons came to New Zealand from the tourist island of St. Maarten in the Caribbean. Cruise ships were a big part of the business interests they had there, so when the cruise ships, no longer able to land in the damaged port of Lyttelton, came to Akaroa instead, they knew immediately there was a market for farm tours. They began with small busloads coming out from the ships but later their customers were more likely to be FIT’s - as in Free Independent Travellers - international visitors on holiday with a rented car and disposable income. While Covid has changed things at least for now, they spent seven years or so doing four interactive, guided farm-tours a day working with travel companies and tour guides, seven days a week. The tours were a natural extension of their core business with everything revolving around the alpacas. The Walkingtons call themselves vertically inte- grated, as Anya explains. “We breed alpacas, and use the fleece for our wide range of knitwear that we sell on the farm. Our focus is all New Zealand made and what we found is that as the demand for our products grew we had to get into quite a big scale of production. The biggest amount of fleece