About Us
How we got started and other great tales.
Brigitte and Keith started An Alternative View with the purchase of 69 acres early in 2002. Brigitte had always liked alpacas, so we purchased a pregnant female with a female cria at foot and a wether, and Alternative View Alpacas was born!
Originally we had them just for the look factor, that being something for Brigitte to look at in our paddocks! Charlie, whom we home-schooled and was 9 at the time, came up to us one day and said he wanted to study sheep fleece. Unfortunately, we didn’t have any sheep, but, we did have alpacas, so we sent him out to study those instead.
We visited the AAA alpaca library in Mitcham, looked up articles on the internet, read books about Bareeda and the Accoyo herd and talked to various breeders at all the shows.
At the Stawell Show in 2004, after the showing was finished, Charlie asked a breeder if he could look at her alpacas. She retorted, “What do you know about alpacas!?” Charlie spent the next 10 minutes discussing with her the merits of using different stud sires, what fleece characteristics to breed for and ways of presenting animals at shows. She was only too delighted to show Charlie her alpacas.
We bought some more alpacas and as our herd grew so did our knowledge, and we realized it was more practical, and cost efficient, to have our own stud sire rather than using outside matings.
Shanbrooke Alpacas had an agister who was moving to Perth, but for various reasons, he could not take his alpacas. And so we purchased FRAN-JO REGAL KING, a beautiful upstanding male with excellent coverage and wonderful crimp.
Our herd has grown to almost 80 animals, and Regal King has done a magnificent job as our herd sire. The improvement in our cria drop has been stunning with the average herd micron (dams mated to Regal) dropping markedly with each drop.
In July 2005, our other herd sire, TILGROVE STATESMAN passed away so we went looking for a sire who could continue the improvement that REGAL had been giving us.
Since 2003, we have been making great strides in improving the fleece of our animals. Below is our fleece from 2005:
And fleece from 2009:
Get in touch
Our alpacas look forward to seeing you soon. To make an accommodation booking or to visit our farm, please call Brigitte on 0427 201 192. We’re only a phone call, sms or email away. 🙂