About Us
Heather and Peter have been in the business of breeding quality fibres for craft use for 20 years. Up until mid 2008 our flock of sheep and later our herd of alpacas were grazing our little farm near Crookwell.
However our circumstances changed and we are now settled in the picturesque O’Connell Valley half way between Bathurst and Oberon. We were fortunate to find a small farm on the slopes facing north with mature trees, native pastures, and four seasons. At approximately 850 metres elevation, we see milder summers and the occasional snow fall. We have plenty of work to do with building fences, fertility and biodiversity. Our animals thrive here.
We first started out with coloured crossbred sheep. With careful selection and choice of rams (very hard to find), the flock is a consistent winner of broad ribbons in fleece shows.
The flock could now be described as Corriedale—medium type—with fleece in the range of 25 to 28µ and a standard deviation of around 3µ. Our sheep are selected for long stapled, soft handling, lustrous, stylish fleeces on a sturdy frame. Colours range from cream, a full range of fawns, brown, grey and nearly black.
The alpacas were added to our farm in 1998, initially as stock guards. These bright, alert creatures have excellent long-range vision and serve to alert the flock of danger, and actually chase foxes away. We really enjoyed having Jet (black of course) and Rusty (red brown of course) around and pretty soon after, we bought our first female, and a herd was born.
In 2009, Heather took on the distributorship of Unicorn fibre washing products in Australia. We saw it as a fit with our production of raw fleeces. Heather tested the product on the fleece we grow and found it to be the best by far, for performance and value.
It became apparent to us that our business name of Braeside Alpacas really didn’t describe what we did, so we took the plunge and changed our name to Valley Fibres as we changed our focus. We have decided to go largely wholesale with our fibre as the demand for it is high, and complement this with our wholesale and retail business marketing Unicorn Products in Australia.
We have also added a new breed to our flock. The heritage breed English Leicester has been added to the flock in collaboration with Mandie and John of Ewe Give me the Knits. You can follow their progress here and on Facebook at the page: Sisters in Sheep. We are aiming to select for length, lustre , handle and defined staple structure in this part of the flock.
We invite you to explore our new site. If you are a retailer, we invite interest in stocking Unicorn products in you store, either online or physical. There is plenty of information on our website about the product and its effectiveness.
We are also happy to retail Unicorn products directly to the public as well as selected fleeces and handmade felt and artworks. Check our online shop we have some surprises there.
Livestock is for sale into JD regions such as our own. We are a vaccinated property and our sheep are healthy and long lived. We are also looking into the provision and sale of frozen semen from our flock, both domestically and overseas. Contact us if you are interested.
With both our alpacas and our sheep, we are aiming to breed fibre that is a delight to prepare and a pleasure to spin—soft handle, lustrous and stylish with a full range of colours.
We also sell breeding stock in alpacas, and guard or spinning wethers. Our entry point is not stud stock, but good easy breeders and good mothers: perfect for the small breeder looking to increase their herd with healthy reliable females, of good Peruvian and Chilean bloodlines.
Sires that have influenced our herd include: Purrumbete Inti, Peruvian Don Julio, Peruvian Heritage, Purrumbete Brigantine, Jolimont Biando, Purrumbete Highlander, Peruvian Sonoma, Suricaya Black Night, Purrumbete Oscar, and Wyona Nazcan Chief.