Huacaya or Suri?
September 4th 2007 22:15
Which alpaca do you like best?
There are two types of alpaca, Huacaya and Suri. They’re essentially the same, but the huacaya has a fleece similar to a sheep, while the suri’s fleece hangs in ringlets.
Some people love the huacaya type, some love the suri better. I love both types. There are fewer suris around than huacaya and so tend to be more expensive to buy, so I only have two at the moment, a little white girl and a russet brown boy who I am hoping will be good enough to keep as a stud when he’s old enough.
By the way, in case you’re wondering, suri is pronounced soo-rie and huacaya is pronounced wah-kay-ya (or thereabouts – everyone has their own take on that).
If you have a property which has many bushes or with lots of trees, where leaves and bark fall to the ground, you’ll probably be much happier with huacayas as their fleeces don’t pick up all the stuff lying about.
I’m constantly pulling bits of stuff off my little suri girl, sticks, blackberry stems, leaves, bark, the lot. Luckily she’s a nice friendly girl and lets me do it, but some alpacas don’t like you touching them much so it would be impossible to keep her if she was like that.
My suri girl has super fine fleece and loves to roll, so that probably doesn’t help either. Alpacas have very dry fleece without the lanolin of sheep fleece. It is believed that they roll to coat their fleece with dirt to help waterproof it. This sounds feasible as if you go out after a heavy rain and stick your hand into the fleece on an alpaca, the top will be sopping wet, but underneath will be warm and dry.
There are two types of alpaca, Huacaya and Suri. They’re essentially the same, but the huacaya has a fleece similar to a sheep, while the suri’s fleece hangs in ringlets.
Huacaya alpacas
Some people love the huacaya type, some love the suri better. I love both types. There are fewer suris around than huacaya and so tend to be more expensive to buy, so I only have two at the moment, a little white girl and a russet brown boy who I am hoping will be good enough to keep as a stud when he’s old enough.
Suri alpaca
By the way, in case you’re wondering, suri is pronounced soo-rie and huacaya is pronounced wah-kay-ya (or thereabouts – everyone has their own take on that).
If you have a property which has many bushes or with lots of trees, where leaves and bark fall to the ground, you’ll probably be much happier with huacayas as their fleeces don’t pick up all the stuff lying about.
I’m constantly pulling bits of stuff off my little suri girl, sticks, blackberry stems, leaves, bark, the lot. Luckily she’s a nice friendly girl and lets me do it, but some alpacas don’t like you touching them much so it would be impossible to keep her if she was like that.
My suri girl has super fine fleece and loves to roll, so that probably doesn’t help either. Alpacas have very dry fleece without the lanolin of sheep fleece. It is believed that they roll to coat their fleece with dirt to help waterproof it. This sounds feasible as if you go out after a heavy rain and stick your hand into the fleece on an alpaca, the top will be sopping wet, but underneath will be warm and dry.
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