What is NAIS?

The National Animal Identification System (NAIS) is a national program intended to identify specific animals in the United States and record their movement over their lifespans. It is being developed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and State agencies?in cooperation with industry?to enable 48-hour traceback of the movements of any diseased or exposed animal. This will help to ensure rapid disease containment and maximum protection of America's animals. To visit the official site click here.

For this system to work every animal including alpacas will need to have a unique indentity and every set of premises a unique identity. The exact 15 digit system for animals including alpacas is yet to be dettermined.

However, the premises system is up and running so you can register your alpaca farm now.
As of today about 120,000 premises have been registered.

On the USDA web site you can find the contact details for every State. The registration process is straight forward and it took me about 2 minutes to register Mulberry Alpacas on the Oregon State web site. The premises ID is issued straight away and ours is = 0079X31.

I don't expect next stage where we identify and record the alpacas to be quite so easy...

By Adrian Stewart

I have today found a bookkeeper who can enter all our paperwork into QuickBooks, this is a huge step forward as I was begining to wonder where I would find the time to enter all the data, produce accounts and file our first US tax return.....all very new and daunting!

The weather remains wet and foul and keeping the alpacas clean and dry is a time consuming job. I will be ready and willing to swap it for irrigation duties when the spring comes.

Our plan to farm bees and produce honey has taken a step closer to reality. The 6 hives are now complete and ready to be installed. The next stage is to create a solid base for them to stand on.

Dadant have been wonderful in helping us get started. Dadant and Sons, Inc. is a family owned business that has served the Beekeeping industry for over 140 years. In fact they must surely be one of the oldest trading family businesses in the USA.

If you are interested in getting into beekeeping (Apiary) then this is the place to look, ask questions and shop.



By Adrian Stewart

Good news; Dante Carrasco of Tehuelche Alpacas is heading down to New Mexico and can take three female alpacas from our farm to Bob and Regina Dart of Llano Soleado Alpacas.

Dante is based up in Washington and has a great trailer for transporting alpacas. Plus he really cares about the alpacas and their welfare. We recommend him.

Now I need to organise health examinations and certificates for the three girls and as its New Mexico they will also need to test negative for TB and Brucellosis to get over the border. To see U.S. State and Territory Animal Import Regulations click here.




by Adrian Stewart

Several people have written to ask how the Mulberry Alpacas Blog is doing. Well the answer isn't a simple one. Most days we get around 20 people who visit the Blog and on busy days we get as many as 150, our current record is 166.

A few contact me with general questions about the alpaca industry especially getting started and some write with specific questions about their alpacas. Currently I take the time to answer each person individually and over the last few months have "met" some really interesting folks.

A couple of people have suggested having a Newsletter rather than a Blog but to be honest I think the Blog works better.

Where is the Mulberry Alpacas Blog going?

To be honest I am not sure. Some days it will be just about ordinary events on a typical alpaca farm and other days about industry topics that affect us all one way or another...

So what?s the point ?

Our purpose is to give people who don't know us, some idea of what we are like, what is important to us and why we do some of the things we do.

As always feedback is gratefully received.


Thanks for calling by

Adrian Stewart

A Merry Christmas to all.

Adrian and Jo Stewart

The phone rang at about 6pm on an otherwise uneventful day..

The female caller asked in urgent tones if we were the llama farm? I said that we were in fact an alpaca farm, so similar, but different. The caller said that wouldn't matter in the least as all she needed was a bag of poop, and alpaca poop would do just fine. She added that it was vital she have it as soon as possible!

I enquired as to what size bag she had in mind, she replied that a large zip lock bag of fresh beans was exactly what she had to have, by tomorrow, Christmas Eve.

At this point my curiosity got the better of me and I was compelled to ask what the purpose of such a small bag would be and why the urgency....after a short silence she confessed that each Christmas Day her children would wake to see not only that Santa had delivered gifts and eaten the milk and cookies they had left for him ...but while Santa was unloading gifts, the reindeer had eaten their carrots and then pooped on the drive......

The alpaca poop was to act as fake reindeer poop?.

So this morning I bagged up some fresh alpaca poop beens and left them at the farm gate as agreed?its a funny old world.

A very Merry Christmas to you all.




By Adrian Stewart

It has been quite amazing watching the banks of fog blow slowly through the valley this week.
Some days we were in the fog. A fog so thick the alpacas became disoriented. Other days we were above the fog and could see over the top to snow capped Mount Ashland.








By Adrian Stewart

Today is Winter Solstice, or Yule. It marks the shortest day of the year (in the Northern Hemisphere) and is an important holiday to those who follow the old ways.

To the ancients, it appeared as if the Sun and Moon stopped in their flight across the sky?this is the longest night of the year and was a time of both anticipation and rejoicing at the Sun's rebirth out of the Goddess.

The Sun's representation as the male divinity, or celestial ruler, predates Christianity. As with other rituals and celebrations, the Church felt that by assimilating this holiday into the Christian beliefs, it would help convert those who still followed the Olde Way.

Personally, I am looking forward to the light nights and spending more time with the alpacas.





By Adrian Stewart

The new barn cats have finally settled in and appear to be enjoying their new home.






By Adrian Stewart

After two weeks in bandages our Australian Shepherd , Gifford is now almost back to normal.
He tangled with some barbed wire but is now very pleased to be out and about.



By Adrian Stewart

Daniel Howden an English journalist describes the stark reality of alpaca farming in Peru.

A cloud crosses the sun. The temperature drop in the thin air is like a slap in the face. High in the Andes, it is springtime and, while the chill is sudden, it is nothing to what last winter brought.

Apolinar Tayro Mamani is an engineer who has been working with the indigenous alpaca farmers in Peru's highlands and had never seen anything like it. "When the blizzards came they were so strong," he said. "The snow fell for a full day and a full night without stopping. It stopped snowing, the skies opened and it was completely clear. Then ice fell from the sky in big shards like glass, and the cold front hit us."

The Quechua people, descendants of the Incas, living at altitudes of up to 4,500 metres, are used to harsh weather. But what they call the friaje is a new phenomenon, believed to be driven by climate change. Last year it sent temperatures plummeting to -35C, killed 50 children and left up to 13,000 people suffering from severe bronchitis, pneumonia and hypothermia. The snow killed all vegetation. And the animals on which the communities depend, the hardy Andean camel, the alpaca, died in their thousands.

Sabino Huillca Huallipe keeps a herd of several hundred alpacas. He was one of the first to join with the British charity, Practical Action, in a project to build shelters for the animals. Practical Action is one of the three charities being supported in The Independent's Christmas Appeal. The simple structures can each house up to 50 alpacas.

There are few climate- change sceptics at this altitude. "The temperature shifts here are getting more extreme," says Huallipe. Cold winters are followed by hot, dry summers and, recently, electric hail storms. "We are peasants, we didn't know what to do about these things."

Climate change can be beautiful as well as sinister. It has smudged a red stripe across the peaks of the Sierra. Less than a generation ago, the highest of these mountains were snow-capped all year. Apolinar, who works for Practical Action, says the people thought the end of the world had come last winter.

These communities depend entirely on the alpaca. The Andean camel, a relative of the llama, provides milk and cheese rich in essential nutrients. Its dense wool offers exceptional insulation. The rest is sold to pay for schooling and whatever can't be farmed.

Alpacas struggle to find food in the snow and ice. Pregnant animals miscarry, and those that survive are exhausted and prone to disease. Without the alpacas, farmers have no means of transporting their only goods to market.

Huallipe is already bracing for the next friaje. His small farm huddles into the side of the valley. Now it lies empty, soon to be filled during shearing season. At either end of the courtyard are two tiny rooms. To keep the warmth in, the rooms have to be claustrophobically small. Inside, the sickly scent of alpaca skins is overwhelming. Hanging from the thatched roof are two dried skeletons. They are alpaca embryos, which hang there, Huallipe says, as a handy insurance against a poor harvest. It is a custom unchanged for hundreds of years. Out through the doorway, the afternoon light reflects off a satellite dish, a modern assurance against being cut off from outside help by a new cold snap.

"It means we can telephone down to the town to get relief," says Huallipe. The solar powered dish, provided by Practical Action, is flanked by an alfalfa patch, laced with purple flowering potato plants. The charity has been teaching the community to use hydroponics to grow blocks of barley feed when the cold sets in. Hydroponics systems need just water and sunlight to grow food.

High above the valley, the wild vicuna make a fleeting appearance. The rare deer-like animal offers an annual bonanza to the Quechua. Once a year, the local people hunt a sustainable number of the animals, which die if they are kept in captivity or farmed.

Black scars mar the paths leading between the farms. Apolinar explains that they burn tyres to ward off lightning from the electric storms. The more traditional weather managers blast fireworks into the clouds, believing they will push the weather away. Ancient or modern, in the face of a changing climate, these people need all the help they can get.

Posted by Adrian Stewart

The sun is shining and the snow is good so I spent the day skiing Mount Ashland with Jamie my eldest son.



By Adrian Stewart

When we built the alpaca barn we opted for a concrete floor on the basis it would be easier to clean out each day and therefore the chances of parasites would probably be much lower..
Of course there is no real way to prove that any of that came to pass.

But one thing that has happened is that the alpacas do not need to have their toe nails clipped as they wear them out on the concrete floor... which is great news.

The downside and there is always a downside is that we don't get to handle the alpacas legs and feet as often as we used to. So now we make it a part of the regular herd health check.



By Adrian Stewart

Today I received a very nice package in the mail from Ben Harford an alpaca breeder back in the UK. He had just been to visit the famous Saltaire Mill in Yorkshire, England. Home of Sir Titus Salt and his amazing alpaca operations in the 1800's.

There are a dozen great black and white pictures in the package and I will no doubt share some of them with you via this Blog.

I heard a history professor once use the word "thin" to describe certain historical sites where the past feels much closer than in other places. Saltaire Mill is one such place.

You can read the full story of Sir Titus and his amazing adventures with alpaca fibre in the Winter 2005 edition of Alpaca Magazine.

Or click here to read the story on our web site: This link takes you to an abbreviated version from where you can link to the full version if you wish.




By Adrian Stewart

Some time ago Snowmass produced a great brochure called the Making of Champions Part I.
Today a copy of The Making of Champions Part II arrived. Its a very glossy publication well produced and full of interesting revelations about breeding alpacas. Snowmass are in an almost unique position in that they have been breeding alpacas for 22 years now and in recent years their private auctions have yielded amazing returns that have do doubt in part been used to finance more research.

If you haven't got a copy try to get your hands on one its well worth reading.

So hats off to Snowmass for sharing what they have learnt with the whole industry. Its a shame they also chose to use this brochure to launch an attack on breed standards and those that support them. But its their brochure so they get to say what they think.

He who pays the piper calls the tune.

By Adrian Stewart