About Clar Innis
In the cool, crisp air of the northern end of New Zealand’s pristine Southern Alps, at an elevation of 800 m, is a paradise for guanacos and people – the Clar Innis Guanaco Stud. Here, in the beautiful Nelson Lakes district, you will find a breeding herd of rare guanacos (pronounced “whah-nah-co”), distant descendents of the wild guanacos of the South American Andes from which domesticated llamas were derived about 4000 B.C. After breeding fine Chilean llamas at Clar Innis since 1995, we are now committed exclusively to breeding their graceful, fine-boned ancestor, the rare-breed guanaco.
Although we did not realise it at the time, our love affair with guanacos began in 1994 when we bought an old female guanaco and her daughter, from the Auckland Zoo. Two years later we added a well-trained llama x guanaco from the Pyne, Gould & Guinness l989 importation from Europe. These we bred to fine Chilean male llamas we bought or imported and they produced many great Chilean crias. However, these elegant females also frequently produced smooth-coated, fine-boned guanaco-like offspring and these were always the ones we most admired. The obvious persistence and resilience of the guanaco gene encouraged our dreams to one day have a herd of guanacos on our sub-alpine land. In 2008 this dream became a reality when we assembled the nucleus of a breeding herd by repurchasing long sold guanacos and collecting together others from around the country.
Amigo de Patagonia, one of the Clar Innis machos, adds guanaco elegance to the view from the homestead.