There's always a story to go with it PART 2

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Permalink Reply by Tom Lund on February 6, 2009 at 10:25pm

When my wife, Robin, and I got married 20+ years ago. She told me she wanted an alpaca or llama. My natural response was, "Yeah, right". She had read about them in high school and had a dream about owning them. We lived and worked in Chicago. Not too many farms or farm animals there. Several times over the years we considered moving further away from the city or out of state and the subject of alpacas would come up again. My response was the same and for various reasons we always put off moving.
In 2004, we saw an ad for an alpaca show. We couldn’t go but agreed to go visit a farm a few weeks later. One farm visit led to another and we were hooked. Spent the next year doing constant research and decided to relocate near Robin’s home town, Grand Rapids. The original plan was to buy a few pacas and agist them and then move in a couple years. Since it took 3 years to agree on our last house I suggested we start looking right away. This suggestion led to what I call the “mad weekend”. On the first day of house hunting, we bought the second house we saw. The following day we bought 4 alpacas and the day after that we bought 3 llamas, a farm tractor, stock trailer, and other assorted equipment. Did I mention that the house was surrounded by 10 acres of forest with no barns or fencing. It’s been a lot of work but we’ve loved every minute of it.

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Permalink Reply by Mary and Kelly Egbert on June 7, 2009 at 11:45pm

My husband is a semi-pro photographer and we are always looking for new and fun photo "trips". I saw an ad in the Salt Lake Tribune for the alpaca (AOBA) show in town in 2008. We had nothing to do that day so I thought we would gather up our cameras and make a fun day out of it. I used to live in Ohio and I remember articles in the newspaper about alpacas and how much money people could make. I was always interested, but back then as a young family we were living paycheck to paycheck and couldn't even think of owning alpacas. That was 20-25 years ago.

We went to the show and just absolutely fell in love with these amazing creatures! We talked to many farms and asked them so many questions. I kept calling them llamas all day and they kept correcting me...all day. Needless to say by the time we left we were completely hooked! We did some research and purchased our first three pregnant females as a starter package. About a month later we took a 3 day course on everything you want to know about alpacas at Northwest Alpacas with Mike Safley. Man did we learn a lot! We should have waited to buy in retrospect. But, as the months went on we kept finding amazing animals that we could just not pass up! We now have 18 alpacas after one year, an amazing herdsire and just purchased another amazing jr. herdsire. We will have 5 cria this summer and expect to have 10 more next summer. We are growing by leaps and bounds and still have no farm. Talk about buying the cart before the horse:) Our house is up for sale and we hope, hope, hope, we can sell it very soon so we can get our own ranch started. We agist them on a local farm, but are very involved in their care. The farm we agist at has been extremely helpful in teaching us the in's and out's about alpaca care. We have taken other seminars, read many books to further our knowledge about raising and breeding alpacas.

We can't wait to have our "family" all together on our own farm. We love every minute of alpaca ownership and breeding and are so glad that we went to that AOBA show that day.

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Permalink Reply by Lorraine Smith on June 8, 2009 at 12:15am

Margery-Ray contains by mom's name and my business partner's father's name--two of the most supportive people we know. My mom, Margery, raised 5 children solo after my father died at the age of 49, and we lacked for nothing, especially love. Sharon's father, Ray, was a huge supporter of Sharon in any endeavor she decided to undertake. We thought it would be a great tribute.

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Permalink Reply by Patty Ludwig~Alpacas in Harmony on June 28, 2009 at 3:48pm

Being the animal lover that I am I was ordering holistic dog books on Amazon.com and at the bottom of the page it said “people who bought those books also bought these” and it gave me a list of books. One of them was called “The Secret”. That one really stood out so I decided to buy it to find out what it was all about plus I needed a few more dollars to get the free shipping.

It’s about the law of attraction which says you get what you think about. It tells you to create a vision board to put on it all the things you want in your life. One day I was helping my friend find pictures for her vision board. She wanted to have a sheep farm and heard that Llamas are great guarding animals for them. So I type Llamas in Google search and Alpacas came up. I read that first page and I was hooked. See I always wanted to live on a farm but never thought I could without having any experience.

I was on the internet every night from that point on investigating this business and before I knew it was right down the road from an alpaca farm which I ended up visiting. I was totally hooked and about 7 months later I purchase 2 bred females and a half interest in young male. By the end of that first year I purchase another bred female and young male.

Here I am in my second year with seven alpacas now waiting for my first cria of this year to be born (Due July 5th 2009). Life is great!!!

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Permalink Reply by Jeff and Pam Bush on June 28, 2009 at 4:53pm

Like some here, we bought land, tried to raise goats and donkeys - after a few incidents of a 4 point landing from being butt from behind by "Monster" our billie, decided we better find something less dangerous for us to raise. Started looking at alpacas, visiting ranches, talking to people and decided to try 2 boys just to see what they were like - figured nothing ventured nothing gained - that was 4 years ago in October, today we have 8 boys, 8 girls 3 crias due in Oct, 1 in Feb, a llama, 2 mixed pyrenees dogs, and a bossy west highland terrier. My husband is the full time ranch hand - he has less stress than he had at HP - lost weight and feels great! Life is good.

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