Suri

Suris share the Huacaya's history exactly, because they are the same species. Alpacas were domesticated from the vicuna in Andean South America, and reached the United States, Australia, Canada, England, France and New Zealand in the 1980s.

They are registered by the Alpaca Owners Association on the same terms: DNA-validated parentage for every new registration since 1998, blood typing before that. The AOA registry recorded 203,699 alpacas in the United States as of September 22, 2026, counted as Suri and Huacaya separately.

Adults weigh 106 to 198 lb and stand 32 to 39 inches at the shoulder, the same as a Huacaya. Gestation is about 350 days and produces a single cria.

The fleece is the breed. It hangs and drapes rather than standing out, usually parting naturally along the spine, and it is grouped into well defined locks that run from the skin to the tip of each lock. The locks should be independent, even in size, and consistent in their wave or spiral from the neck through the body. There is no crimp and very little loft.

Lustre is the other half of it, and it is what Suri fleece is bought for.

Suri fiber carries a low proportion of hairs finer than 35 microns and fewer hairs with more than eight cuticular scales, which is the measurable side of what handlers describe as slipperiness.

The same as any alpaca: a social herd animal, more herd-minded than a llama, handled in a halter, and inclined to spit when annoyed. Nails rather than hooves.

Nothing about the fleece changes how the animal behaves.

Fiber. Suri fleece is a specialist product and it is not interchangeable with Huacaya fleece: it knits heavy and drapey rather than lofty, so it goes to different uses and often to different buyers.

Breeding stock and companion geldings sell here as they do for Huacayas.

Everything a Huacaya needs, and shearing is if anything less optional. A Suri fleece mats if it is neglected, and the lock structure that makes it valuable is the first thing to go.

Company. Another alpaca, not a solitary life.

Toenail clipping, teeth, and a parasite plan that names meningeal worm. White-tailed deer carry it harmlessly, snails and slugs pass it on, and it causes uncoordinated movement, lameness, paralysis and blindness. It is very hard to treat and treatment may fail, so prevention is what matters: deer-proof fencing, clearing thick ground cover, and keeping stock away from snail and slug ground.

Ask for the histogram and its date, the same as for a Huacaya, and then look at the animal. Lock structure, luster and how evenly the locks run from neck to britch are judged by eye, and a lab report says nothing about any of them.

Ask for the AOA registration, and check it says Suri. The two breeds are registered separately.

Be clear about the market you are buying into. Suri is the rarer breed, which is a selling point and also a smaller pool of buyers, of shearers who know the coat, and of mills set up to process it.

Recent sale prices on HoofnHorn, where there are any, are further down this page.