Alpaca World Magazine Summer 2005 - Classical MileEnd Alpacas

FirststepsRichard Ryan introduces theAlpaca Association of IrelandWell we made it through our fi rst year,association intact, lots of decisionsmade and loads of work still to do. Not abad report I suppose on what will in time becomea viable, profi table and enjoyable alternative farmenterprise in Ireland.The alpaca owners in Ireland made a decision acouple of years ago to set up our own Associationand Register. I got the job of getting everyonetogether which I thought no problem arrange ameeting and that’s it, back to Connemara and geton with the day to day tasks of a very complicatedlife of farming with a few sheep even less alpacas,working part time in a local hotel, starting a payrollbusiness from home, being a dad and runningthe home whilst my very patient wife goes outto work and gets some real money. Life is neverstraightforward as I end up leaving the meeting asthe Chairman of the Alpaca Association of Ireland.Coming back from that fi rst meeting I waswondering how from just wanting to buy a coupleof geldings to see how they got on I seem to havetaken a leading role in the Alpaca industry inIreland. It started around four years ago when Ikept coming across articles about alpacas and thebrain began to tick away fi guring out that theselovely animals would potentially work well on ourvery small hill farm in Connemara. Due to all kindsof restrictions we had been kept back to just 30ewes and this had been reduced even further so ifthe farm was going to survive without just relyingon the “cheque in the post” I had to do somethingelse. Then we saw them on the television andshortly after a visit to Xandria Williams in CoKildare we were confronted with the real thing.After that and with some detective work I trackeddown what was the fi rst alpaca herd in Irelandowned by Anna-May Driscoll and Damien Dyar whohad a small herd in Co Clare. A couple of visitslater the business plan was into the bank and aloan arranged to buy 3 females and one cria froman Australian partnership who had been agistingsome animals on this farm.I have to say that I’d read so much aboutalpacas and I don’t remember any articles onanimals having problems and they all pointedtowards this easy to care for, potentially veryprofi table animal. Well after nearly three yearsof being an alpaca owner I have at times reallywondered was it all just a clever marketing scam.We’ve lost one animal with pneumonia, onerefused to get pregnant and one of them abortedher cria last year so the business plan went outthe window. Hopefully now we have had our run ofbad luck and things will start looking up with ourtwo remaining females both expecting and duearound the end of July. So all going well we shouldbe making progress, but if I ever hear or seeanyone saying alpacas are as easy as sheep they’dbetter duck. Despite having taken a hammeringwe’ve fi gured out solutions to some diffi cultieswith the conditions here and now armed with thisknowledge I’m confi dent that it was and will be agood move to get them.Sounds like a pretty miserable fi rst three yearsbut we’ve also had loads of fun. In particularmeeting people from all over the world who stopat the gate wondering if they are seeing things.They have some strange looking sheep overin Derryrush was the talk of our local bar andnews has travelled throughout Connemara of ourenterprise. Yes they are lovely gentle animals Ikeep telling my wife who somehow seems to havethe unfortunate knack of being spat at and kickedon several occasions much to the amusementof our daughter age seven who keeps saying ‘butMum they don’t do that to me.’We’ve now got around twenty owners in thecountry I’ve been busy tracking each one downand encouraging them without breaking any bonesto join our little band. (I might even start my ownAlpaca owner tracing agency as I’m getting quitegood so if there’s anymore out there I’ll fi nd you).We’ve set up the basics of the Association andwe’re now working on our register and a screeningprocess which we hope to have off the groundsometime next year. I believe our register will beunique in as much it will be a “two tier” system,the idea being that all the alpacas in the countrywill be listed and then it is up to the owners if theywant to have them screened, the screening detailswill be added to the animals registration.I have to admit it is a bit radical as alpacaregisters go but by doing this we will be able tokeep details of all the animals and not just thosethat are deemed to be the best. This I believeshould help us not only to have a top qualitynational herd by having a good screening processbut by keeping data on all the animals it shouldhelp with other issues such as trends in healthproblems, fi bre and to have a viable trackingrecord of animal movements in the event of futuredisease outbreaks.We’ve also decided to approach the Dept ofAgriculture to have alpacas recognised as livestock,the immediate effect of this will be to advertisethem to thousands of farmers in the country as analternative option as they wonder what an alpacais and why does it appear on the livestock sectionof the forms. I’m getting fed up of changing all myforms to include alpacas. I’m sure our local offi cethinks I’m crazy. The other advantages will hopefullydevelop over the coming years but as it is going to bea farming enterprise there is no harm getting in therenow rather than later.With around 200 or so animals in the country wehave a long way to go but there are more on their wayfrom Australia and of course I would guess at leastanother 50 cria due this year, the numbers will startto go up. Like anywhere the quality of the animalsvaries with some excellent and others not so goodbut the good thing is that you can always improveby breeding up to the better males that are nowbecoming available here. We have a long way to gostill but it is certainly going to be an exciting journey.So an exciting year and successful year and guesswhat I’m still the Chairman and despite the hard workit is great fun, just hope I’m not saying this in 2025as I think I deserve to retire by then.Alpaca World Magazine Summer 2005 | 23