Huarizos Revisited

I’ve blogged about huarizos a number of times since we’ve had a few batches of births of them over the years. I defined them as male alpaca / female llama crosses, as that’s which way round ours were, but I may have got that wrong. Opinion was divided online as to whether those were huarizos or mistis and I went with huarizo. But now, having done some more research, I’m inclined to go with the baby of a male alpaca / female llama as being a misti.

But I guess that’s academic really since our new arrival isn’t either!

Harry (at least, that’s his name at the moment) is the son of a misti mum, Juliette, and most likely an alpaca father. We suspect Ted, but it might have been Seamus. Or even Wiggo, but to go by Harry’s colour then Ted is the most likely. But Harry shouldn’t be here at all as everything I’ve read up to now says that llama/alpaca crosses, whichever way around, are sterile. It needed gene modification to be able to breed from one. We relied on that information being correct but it turns out it isn’t. But then I suppose nothing is 100% guaranteed.

So what term to use for an alpaca / misti cross. A alpsti? An almi? Impact alias, which is an anagram? And maybe we won’t stay with Harry as his name, since that was inspired by him being half a Huarizo. I used the name Sir Winter in my Christmas novel ‘Fa-La-Llama-La’, and since this little impact alias was quietly gestating away while I was writing the book then that might be a good name for this little guy.

So now we’re playing a waiting game to see if any more unexpected babies appear…