About Us
Welcome to Dark Sky Alpacas in rugged and beautiful North Cornwall.
We completed our ‘escape to the country’ in December 2017, leaving behind the corporate world, and set to work establishing our alpaca farm and business.
Our aim is to breed top class animals, contribute to the developing alpaca industry here in the UK and enjoy life spent in the wonderful outdoors with these beautiful, sensitive creatures.
We set up our farm with biosecurity paramount in our design and implementation, so there’s approaching 2km of buried ‘badger proof’ fencing at the perimeter, erected with our own blood, sweat and tears.
Starting out with a mixed herd of Huacaya and Suri, we fell in love with the Suri in particular - so now we specialise in Suri with just a few favourite Huacaya. We've brought together outstanding genetics from some of the best UK breeders - including Spring Farm, Faraway, CS Alpacas, Inca, Artwork and Popham - and also imported from Surico and Thistledown in New Zealand.
Along the way, it’s been invaluable to meet, visit and work with so many other alpaca breeders who have been generous with their time and advice and great fun too. We’d love to welcome you to our farm to meet our alpacas to see if there’s any way we can support your business and breeding plans.
You can check out more of our adventures here on the farm below!
Wendy & Tom
Dark Sky (Ad)Ventures
Luxury products from our own alpacas
Alpacas have the most stunning fibre and the Suri in particular is so lustrous and soft that we feel it’s fitting that it is used to create outstanding cloth and garments. Being relatively rare, only a few specialist mills in the UK can process the fibre and we are delighted to work with Phil Mills at Two Rivers Mill in Northern Ireland. His expertise means that he always produces the highest quality and is able to experiment and work with us to produce something unique. We’ve used the yarn to create two limited edition ranges so far – the Cornish Alpaca Smocks and our Tartan Alpaca products. The latter involved creating and registering a unique tartan pattern on the Scottish Register of Tartans, and then weaving cloth to be used in a variety of garments, accessories and soft furnishings – including some very bespoke upholstery in our Defender!
Building farm things
As we both love being outdoors and a ‘bit of a project’, there is usually some big building initiative going on at the farm. Our strategy is to learn a new skill from an expert and then go solo as soon as possible putting it into practice. We started with learning fencing – ending up digging in over 2 kms of badger proof around our perimeter. Then we observed as our initial barns were erected before self building our latest addition. We’ve also completed some major ‘eco friendly off grid’ initiatives with the addition of a biomass boiler (replacing oil), a small field of solar panels and roof mounted wind turbines plus batteries (getting us almost entirely off the electricity grid) and a new bore hole upgrading our water supply (previously from a spring)
Holiday cottage & the log cabin
When we worked alongside the builders to create our first holiday cottage, Little Inka, this gave us the thirst for our biggest endeavour yet – to build a traditional ‘whole log’ cabin from scratch with just ourselves as the workforce.
We are extremely proud of ‘Alpacabin’ and are considering living in it full time!
In the meantime if you fancy coming to stay on the farm, check out Little Inka at Unique Homestays
Land Rover Defender V8 Custom Build
We needed a vehicle to tow the alpacas – so we had to have a Defender. But not just any old one! We found a V8 conversion that needed the full works so our Alex Price and the team at Tamar Country Cars did the honours – including incorporating the Dark Sky Tartan! Meet Greta Thunderberg….
Perimeter fence inside boundary wall
Perimeter fence inside boundary wall
Perimeter fence inside boundary wall
The perimeter fence is positioned a minimum of 2 metres inside our walled boundary, preventing any contact with neighbouring livestock.
We routinely conduct boundary checks
Badger proof fencing
Perimeter fence inside boundary wall
Perimeter fence inside boundary wall
The entire perimeter is protected with badger proof fencing sunk into the ground to prevent badgers digging underneath it. It also has more closely spaced vertical stay wires than regular stock fencing tp prevent badgers forcing their way through it.
Raised feeding and water stations
Perimeter fence inside boundary wall
Drive by matings on disinfected concrete
All feed and water stations are raised above ground level and the areas regularly cleaned and maintained - to guard against wildlife sharing them with the alpacas
Drive by matings on disinfected concrete
Drive by matings on disinfected concrete
Drive by matings on disinfected concrete
Drive by stud services are carried out in a disinfected pen and the female kept in a head collar to prevent any spitting at the male.
Enferplex Testing
Drive by matings on disinfected concrete
Biosecurity notices at entrances
Any alpaca moving on to the farm must be bTB tested clear before delivery to the farm and all alpacas sold and leaving the farm are also tested. We have never had a case of bTB.
In addition all moving alpacas are de-wormed with Zolvix.
Biosecurity notices at entrances
Drive by matings on disinfected concrete
Biosecurity notices at entrances
All people entering the farm through the perimeter fencing are asked to disinfect feet using disinfectant dips.
Our Herd Name
We are lucky enough to live on the edge of beautiful Bodmin Moor which has been designated as an International Dark Sky Landscape in recognition of the exceptional quality of the night sky - the inspiration for our name.
