Why alpacas?

I started raising alpacas in 2004 as a way to justify staying at home with the kids. By trade, I’m a nurse but this took me away from home for 8-12 hour shifts and I felt I way missing too much of our kid’s formative years. So, my husband and I decided to start a business involving raising and selling animals because we already had the farm property and we thought the kids could benefit from the rigors of farm life. My criteria for raising an animal for profit was that I wanted to be able to hug and squeeze it, name it and profit from it without having to kill it. After 2 years of research we decided on alpacas. We fixed up our barn for them and we put in automatic waterers and fencing. I took classes, researched health concerns and attended many alpaca shows. We visited plenty of other alpaca farms and finally, we thought we were ready. We never raised animals before but we did our research and thought we were ready. How hard could it be? We bought 4 alpacas and brought them home. As it turns out, being responsible for a group of exotic animals is harder than we thought. They are unique in that veterinarians don’t know much about them and they are very different than other farm animals. We heavily depended on the “Alpaca Community” of other farmers to learn everything we could.

As time went on and we started having crias (babies), it came time to start to sell them. After all, that was the business plan. I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t part with those sweet little faces and those fluffy little butts. I needed to change my business plan. My husband and our 2 kids certainly help with daily care and maintenance but this is my business. I changed my business plan so I could keep most of my animals over the years. Since I love to share my alpacas with people and I love to talk about them endlessly, agritourism was the way to go. Now I host many Events on the farm where other people get to come over and hug an alpaca and learn all about them. We have since added another barn to the mix and even a farm store which sells everything alpaca. I have learned so much about fiber arts that I not only sell my handmade products in the store but teach others how to work with fiber as well.

Everyday brings something new and no two days are alike. This blog will give you a peak into my life on our fluffy farm