By day, Binghamton University professors Ann and Andy Merriwether lecture to hundreds of students.
But the 20-acre farm that they come home to is populated by a herd of nearly 30 alpaca, four angora rabbits, two artificially inseminated sheep, a 145-pound dog named Quinn and a boarding horse named April May.
The Merriwethers started breeding alpaca, an animal related to the llama and native to the Andes of South America, after seeing them in a parade in Michigan. Since starting their farm in Ann-Arbor, where they taught at the University of Michigan, their herd has grown from the original three female alpaca they purchased to the 28 that now reside on their farm in Vestal, where they moved to in 2002. Ten more baby alpaca, called crias, are expected this year.
But their property, Nyala Farm, is not the only one in the Greater Binghamton area to feature these remarkable camelids — and the Merriwethers are no ordinary breeders.
Andy Merriwether, who teaches biological anthropology, first worked with the animals when researching ancient DNA from archaeological skeletal remains, including alpaca that the Incas mummified before the Spanish conquest of Peru. He is one of the only researchers in the world who specializes in camelid genetics, and his ongoing research incorporates the alpaca at Nyala Farm.
“It’s one of the things I’ve always done,” he said. “I have blood samples from all those [alpaca from the farm] that I use for mapping the genes in color genetics. I’m also interested in what causes them to be so many different colors.”
Alpaca, who, like sheep, are bred to be sheared, have wool that comes in 16 different colors and even more patterns. But, according to the Merriwethers, alpaca wool is eight to ten times warmer than sheep’s wool and six times as strong. And fibers from alpaca do not have lanolin, a grease that is found in abundance in sheep’s wool and must be washed out before it can be spun.
There are also two kinds of alpaca: huacayas, who have warmer, crimped hair, and suris, which are rarer and have shinier, dreadlocked hair.
“Huacayas look more like teddy bears, and suris look more like afghan dogs,” explained Ann Merriwether, who specializes in developmental psychology.
“I got funded with a grant to map the gene for that [the suri trait],” Andy said. “It looks like a single gene dominant trait, so if you have one single mutation, you’re a suri.”
While Nyala Farm only has one and a half suris (the halfbreed’s father, Muhammed, managed to make it into a pen of huacaya females before being recaptured; his offspring was festively named Muhammed’s Escape) Merriwether said he is relying on breeders from across the country to send him blood samples.
Nyala Farm is also part of a cooperative with 17 other alpaca breeders in the area, which collaborate to sell alpaca to people across the country, and engage in educational programs in the Southern Tier.
According to Ann, alpaca breeding is a widespread and expanding industry in the United States.
“When we moved here, there were 100 farms in the state. Now there are over 200,” she said.
The increase in the popularity of alpaca breeding is surprising to few — the animals are relatively easy to keep. They eat very little, since they’re used to the harsh conditions of the Andes. And they defecate in discrete piles, separate from their eating spaces.
The practice, which dates back to the prehistoric Andes, suffered a major setback when the Spanish conquered the Incas and allowed all Andean camelids, like the llama, alpaca, vicuÃ.ña and guanaco, to interbreed. Although all alpaca in the United States either originate or descend from Peru, the importation of alpaca from Peru was stopped in 1998.
While all camelids can interbreed and produce fertile offspring, research has indicated that alpaca were domesticated in the Andes from vicuÃ.ña, and llamas from guanacos.
“These are nowhere as fine-fleeced as the alpaca the Inca had,” said Andy Merriwether of the animals at Nyala Farm today. “But they had the advantage of a couple of millenia of alpaca breeding.”
Today, virtually every specimen has been registered with a blood sample at the Nebraska-based Alpaca Registry, and their lineages are registered like those of thoroughbred horses. This makes it useless to steal alpaca, the Merriwethers said, since a simple blood test will confirm an animal’s ownership.
Andy Merriwether’s research with alpaca genetics also involves humans, as there are 20 different disorders that afflict both species.
One of them, choanal atresia, is a condition in which the membrane in a fetus’s nasal passageway doesn’t disappear when the offspring is born. This allows it to breathe only through its mouth, which, in nearly all cases, leads to suffocation during nursing.
If the same genes in alpaca and humans are responsible for these syndromes, Andy’s research with alpaca genetics could go a long way in uncovering how these disorders function genetically in humans.
Many of the students in Andy Merriwether’s biological anthropology class were unaware that he and Ann have a farm — or even know what an alpaca is. But the research continues unabated.
“I have the advantage of really understanding the breed, knowing what the industry is interested in, and also understanding the evolution of the species,” he said. “I think what most people don’t have, is that I can think of things to do with them that other geneticists wouldn’t think to do, so I’m sort of taking advantage of different aspects of my training to tie them together. The farm is for fun, but it’s also for doing some research related to it.”
But the Merriwethers’ herd isn’t merely a research tool: it’s a moneymaker, too. Although selling wool more than pays for keeping the alpaca, most of the alpaca-related income comes from selling them to other farms.
The Merriwethers, though, noticed that their daughters, Helen, 8 and Kenny, 11, were growing attached to the alpaca and that every sale meant another pair of broken hearts. So they picked one animal who was to become the family’s pet and show animal: Patriot, a dark fawn huacaya male.
Alpaca are well-suited to showing, Ann said, because their intelligence allows them to learn to do obstacle courses by themselves. In fact, the girls have won a number of prizes showing Patriot and other alpaca, although Patriot is the only one at Nyala Farm who seems to really enjoy the experience.
But the interpersonal relationships on Nyala Farm go beyond those between farmer and animal. The Merriwethers’ Newfoundland dog, Quinn, and a female alpaca named Valkyrie, got a little too close when he reached maturity and tried to mate with her. The star-crossed almost-lovers have since been separated.
And April May, a horse that is boarding at Nyala Farm, has been known to run with the alpaca herd, which can reach a maximum speed of 40 miles per hour.
“She thinks it’s pretty funny,” said Ann Merriwether.