Barlaston Alpacas is located at the former Poultry Farm on Old Road in Barlaston. It is owned by Paul and Erika Calladine and they have been in business for 4 years.
Barlaston Alpacas is an alpaca farm offering that offers alpaca walking, farm visits, and craft sessions. They also sell pure British alpaca wool grown entirely in the UK.
"From the Andes to Barlaston: Alpacas find a cosy new home at family smallholding From Staffordshire Newsletter By Kerry Ashdown
THE ANDES may be more than 10,000 miles away from Barlaston but six Peruvian natives have settled in happily at a village smallholding.
While sheep and cattle are an everyday sight in rural Staffordshire, alpacas have starting appearing in fields in recent years. And last year the Calladine family - solicitor Paul, health visitor Erika, daughter Lizzie, 22, and son George, 17, a college student, welcomed their first alpacas to their Old Road home.
Lizzie, a project officer for Staffordshire Housing, said: "We used to rent the land out for horses and we had a debate on what animals we wanted to put on it. We wanted something to keep the grass down, which is less maintenance than sheep. With us working full time, we decided sheep were not the way forward.
"My mother did a course on alpacas last February. She knits and she loves alpaca wool. The alpacas came to us last August and they will be shorn in May.
"We plan to breed them and will be looking at which is the most suitable male. That is partially determined by face shape and 60 per cent is fleece stats.
"We will also be starting to show them; we have been halter training them so they can go to shows."
Barlaston Alpacas, launched last year, is welcoming visitors for fully booked alpaca walking and craft sessions next month. The Calladines are also considering inviting people to meet the alpacas on Open Farm Sunday, which this year falls on June 5, and running alpaca husbandary courses.
In June the Calladines are due to welcome two new additions when two of their females, five-year-old Firefoot and three-year-old Aerope, give birth to cria.
Currently Firefoot and Aerope share their paddock with another female, Dior, seven. The Calladines also have three males; weanlings Marvin, Castor and Mako, who are all under a year old.
At first the camelids can appear similar in appearance to their more well-known South American cousins, llamas. But alpacas are smaller in size and have shorter ears.
Alpacas' gestation period is 11 -12 months and they can mate all year round as they are induced ovulators (meaning the act of mating causes them to ovulate). They give birth during morning hours and generally do not need assistance during the event.
Both llamas and alpacas are known for spitting, both at their own species and humans. But Lizzie said: "I think it is a very undeserved reputation.
"I have been spat at once in the last month and that was because I was injecting Dior, which is fair enough. The most we seem to get is not spitting but puffing air.
"They are not tame and we do not want them to be tame, but they're pretty good.
"They're very used to a cold climate so they are fine here. Their fleece is very warm – I put my hand down Marvin's side the other day and he was like a little radiator." SOURCE: (
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