Andrew Chilton discusses the joy of running his Alpaca farm in Knockvicar
For a man who didn’t know what an alpaca was until a conversation he had in 2012, Andrew Chilton has certainly made a name for himself in alpaca farming circles. Years of learning about, caring for and breeding these beautiful animals have taught him a lot and awakened a passion that he has even passed on to his children.
“They say every day’s a school day, I know it’s a cliche, but you learn about yourself and about the alpacas every day. You can never know enough. And the more you learn about them, the more you know that you know nothing. So yeah, they surprise you all the time. They’re really amazing animals. They’re all individuals,” said Andrew.
“We’ve imported several alpacas from Switzerland. We have alpacas from the United Kingdom, we have alpacas from Australia, and then the rest are home bred. And we’re a registered breeding station with the Alpaca Association of Ireland. So I guess you could say we’ve gone all in – immersed ourselves in the alpaca world.”
Originally from South Africa, Andrew came to Ireland in 1999, where he started working with Vodafone, which was known as eircell back then. But from when he was “knee-high to a grasshopper”, he always wanted to be a farmer. And so, he and his wife bought a small farm in north County Roscommon, near Lough Key, where they started to farm organically.
It was in 2014 that Andrew and his wife bought seven alpacas from an Irish farm and started what would be a huge learning curve, leading to them eventually owning an average of 50 alpacas at any given time.
“When you start learning about animals, you realise very quickly that they’re all unique individuals,” Andrew explained.
“They all have their own personalities, their own characteristics. They have good days and bad days, they have cheeky days, and you get to see that. When you come in the morning, the first sense you get is how the herd is, so how they are as a group, and we keep them in two stable groups.
“We keep a male breeding group, which we keep separate. Those are all stud males, and we keep a female breeding herd. They’re all either pregnant females or lactating females. So they have babies that they’re looking after, and depending on what’s happened overnight or since the last time that you’re involved with them, they behave differently. So if everyone’s cold and shivery, then they can be a little bit cranky. And if it’s a beautiful, spectacular morning, then they’re in a good space too. So you get to learn that. You get to see that and experience that every time.”
There are four elements to Knockvicar Alpaca farm. Firstly, they’re a breeding station, breeding high-quality fibre alpacas and selling those to other breeding stations or to people who want to start their own alpaca journey.
“So what we would traditionally do is we build up to a herd of about 60, and then we sell two or three small starter herds, somewhere between five and eight animals into a group. And we can do that every other year. Unless people come with a specific breed requirement for a specific genetic line, in which case we can be a little bit more specific,” said Andrew.
Secondly, they’re an open farm and, while it was never Andrew’s intention to be open to the public, he admitted the farm wasn’t bringing in much money and so they began offering “farm tours with a twist”.
“It’s about education, so it’s not just come and visit the alpacas and feed them, but we try to do a little bit of education. So when people leave, they’ve not only had an interaction with the alpacas, but they’ve actually learned a bit about what they’re for and how to care for them and where they came from, just to make it a little bit more interesting,” he explained.
“That has actually led to some exciting work with organisations like the HSE and Tusla and some of the disability services, where they have participants who perhaps haven’t had the same life opportunities as us, or don’t have the same opportunities to just do activities. And so we’re very fortunate. We have a lovely farm facility, and we get a lot of visitors from organisations such as St Christopher’s, where they can actually drive their bus into the barn and unload their people in their wheelchairs onto a concrete floor, and then we can put the animals in there. So they get to have a real interaction with the animals. So that’s a little bit unique. You don’t have to bring people into the fields to experience them, you can bring the animals to the people.”
Coupled with that is the third aspect of Knockvicar Alpacas – the treks. While the females and babies often form part of the farm visit, it is the breeding males who are used for alpaca trekking.
“And the reason we do that is the females, because they’re either pregnant or lactating, they’re quite at risk of miscarriage. And so just from a pure welfare perspective, we leave them alone. So we don’t stress them out at all.”
Fourthly, and primarily, Knockvicar Alpacas is an alpaca wool farm, with the wool from the herd being used for high-quality, luxury duvets and pillows.
“The wool is very sought after because it’s got a couple of really specialist characteristics. So alpaca fleece is hypoallergenic, which means people who suffer from dust allergies aren’t allergic to alpaca wool,” said Andrew.
“It’s also internationally renowned as a thermoregulator. So it keeps you warm in winter and cool in summer, which is quite special. And then the third characteristic is that it isn’t scratchy like sheep’s wool. So it’s quite popular from a luxury brand perspective, because the wool isn’t scratchy when you wear it against your skin.”
Everything is done on the farm, which Andrew says is “a single stop shop.” This means all the shearing is done on site.
“And I wasn’t a very good shearer when I started. You can imagine, I hadn’t had any classical training in sheep shearing or alpaca shearing or anything like that. And so I had to teach myself how to do that. And so the first two years maybe, my skills weren’t as good as they could be. The alpacas were looking a little bit bedraggled,” Andrew laughed.
“But the quality of the wool that I was producing wasn’t as good as it could be because when you send wool to a mill, they need consistency and continuity of colour and all that. And so while we were learning, we weren’t very good at it. And so we had to find a product that was much more forgiving. And the product that we settled on is pillows and duvets.”
On top of all that, Knockvicar Alpacas is involved in a lot of education and training. The Sligo College of Further Education will send level five and level six animal care students to do practical work with the animals, such as trimming their toenails or providing them with their medicine to prevent various diseases such as clostridial disease or worms.
“And it’s been fantastic from my kids’ perspective too,” said Andrew. “They’ve learned to deal with people and they can lead tours and they can take alpaca treks. And it’s helped in their own development as little people, in terms of their confidence and their ability to speak to groups of people and to think about things like safety.
“We’re also very involved in the Alpaca Association of Ireland. So I’m on the committee, and we’re very interested in promoting alpacas as an enterprise, as a business, but also the welfare of animals to make sure we have breed standards and welfare requirements and practices that make it good for the animals. We hosted a veterinary course where we brought an internationally recognized alpaca vet over from the UK to train us here, and the kids sat in on that and they’re going, ‘there was nothing she said that we hadn’t talked about’. And that was, for me, the biggest kick out of the day.”
Andrew encourages people to visit the farm but stresses everything is done by appointment only, which is the best way to guarantee there’ll be someone there.
“The alpacas are part of a mosaic of revenue streams for the farm. So we’re an organic farm and we do organic beef and we do organic vegetables, and we’re a farming for nature farm, so we do a lot of high nature value activities. We have bird boxes and bee boxes and owl boxes and bat boxes,” said Andrew.
“So we’re doing a lot for the environment as well. And that’s where our passion is. We’re just kind of lucky. The universe has been generous to us. We have a beautiful farm, with beautiful alpacas.”
Knockvicar Alpacas has a very active Facebook page where more information can be found. Or, to book an appointment for a farm visit, contact 086 052 6560.
