Last year, we added a group of alpacas to our farm from Oxford, and one of the white boys, Sapphire Bernie, quickly caught our attention with his strong frame and inquisitive personality.

Aside from his standout physical traits, Bernie has a lovely dense, white fleece with great staple length. Intrigued by his lineage, we began researching his pedigree and reached out to Mary Jo of Bozedown Alpacas for help.

To our surprise, we found out that all of Bernie's ancestors were elite Peruvian animals, sourced from some of the best small herds in Peru. What's more, he can be traced directly back to Peru with absolute certainty, which is rare given the mixture of Chilean and other bloodlines in the UK.

Bernie's mother, Berenice of Bozedown, had impressive fiber stats when she was imported to the UK. Meanwhile, his father, Bozedown Comet 2, was bred in the country from two elite imports in Galaxy and Venus of Bozedown.

As we delved deeper into Bernie's ancestry, we were thrilled to learn that Berenice was a great female, which gives us more confidence in Bernie's future breeding success.

With a few of our girls already pregnant to him this year, we're excited to see how he does in the breeding program. Overall, we're grateful for the opportunity to work with such an impressive alpaca and to learn more about the lineage and breeding process.

A big thanks to Mary Jo for helping us uncover Bernie's ancestry and for sharing her expertise with us. We look forward to continuing to share our alpaca breeding journey with you.