About Alcazar Suri Stud

The Alcazar Suri Stud® is co-owned by Deborah Smith & David Cooper and Fiona & Ian Vanderbeek, with the herd grazing on “Shangrilah” in the Northern Tablelands of NSW, and “Birrong” in the Southern Highlands of NSW. The origins of the herd, however, lie in many years of work by Pierre Baychelier and Brenton Spehr, from whom we purchased the Alcazar herd in 2010.

The Alcazar Suri Stud was established by Pierre and Brenton in 1999. With Pierre’s background in veterinary medicine and their mutual passion for suri genetics, they set out to breed a herd of suri that were genetically “pure”. In addition, they had a focus on correct conformation and strong frame, along with continually working to improve the suri fleece characteristics within the herd and ensuring the bloodlines used would produce only solid white animals.

As an easy way to quickly identify the number of known suris in an animal’s pedigree, Alcazar established a unique naming convention. Each suri registered on the IAR by Alcazar has a name with the suffix S followed by a number. For example, a suri with the suffix “S10” has ten known, registered suri ancestors—a short-hand method of indicating the depth of knowledge about an individual suri’s pedigree. In recent years, Alcazar has registered suris with the impressive suffix of S24.

Over the years, Pierre and Brenton refined their skills in line-breeding to some of the best suri bloodlines available at the time (including Senator and Amador). In more recent years the herd benefited from an infusion of new Accoyo blood—in particular through their own bred male, Alcazar Domingo S8—sired by the late Surilana Icalon—one of the most influential suri males of recent times.

To this was added, in 2008, the pure Accoyo male Surilana Mister Macusani ET, sired by Surilana T-Pito, out of a top quality female, Macusani Miss.

During 2010 Pierre and Brenton decided the time had come to sell their herd and farm. When we were offered the opportunity to buy the herd in its entirety, we immediately saw a unique opportunity to take the Alcazar herd, together with our individually owned Birrong Suri and Shangrilah herds, forward and develop one of the largest exclusively white suri alpaca herds in the country.

Birrong Suri and Shangrilah were already one of only a handful of alpaca breeders in Australia focussed only on suri and only on white. With the owners of the two studs already friends united by a love of the white suri, the match between our herds and Alcazar was perfect. The key difference between the Birrong Suri and Shangrilah herds and the Alcazar herd is that the former have both used cross-bred suri in their breeding programs, whereas Alcazar has always held true to its motto of Keeping the Suri Pure®. This will continue in the future development of the Alcazar herd.

The complementarity of the herds is very exciting and bodes well for the future development of the white suri breed. A big, strong-boned frame is a trademark of an Alcazar animal. Birrong Suri in the Southern Highlands and Shangrilah in the Northern Tablelands (both classic fine-wool growing country) have for many years been producing suris with very fine and lustrous fleeces and this combination of frame, fineness and lustre augurs well for the ongoing development of the Alcazar herd.

Although the three herds will continue to operate separately, the core group of Alcazar females have been split between the southern and northern NSW bases of the Alcazar Suri Stud®. To infuse some new genetics into the Alcazar herd, a small number of selected females will be moved into the Alcazar herd from Birrong Suri and Shangrilah. In addition, we have the opportunity to bring in new bloodlines using two outstanding stud males: Surilana Donaldo (son of Surilana Odin and Surilana Donella de Allianza) co-owned by Shangrilah Alpacas and Surilana, and Surilana Quo Vadis ET (son of Surilana Il Papa and Surilana Macusani Ma Belle) co-owned by Birrong Suri, Surilana and Elimbari.

To read more about the herds of Birrong Suri and Shangrilah, visit their websites by clicking on the following links: