alpacas

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My wife Teri and I recently purchased a 6 acre farm in Bayville and are interested in raising Alpacas for fiber. Please send information on sale and cost if available. Thanks, Craig Velardi

-- craig velardi (craig@its-a-living.com), October 13, 2000

Answers

I contacted the Alpaca breeders association a year or so ago. If you are rich and looking for a tax shelter, they are excellent. At $20,000 and up for breeding stock, I think I'll stick with goats. They are beautiful, but too rich for my blood.

-- melina bush (goatgal1@juno.com), October 13, 2000.

Craig, unless you have money to burn, why don't you start with other, less expensive fiber animals? You'll learn the basic animal husbandry involved, and someday alpaca prices will come down! There are some rare breeds of sheep with lovely fleeces; angora rabbits, angora or cashmere goats, even some breeds of dogs! Even the most expensive of these will be a lot less expensive than those alpacas. For more information on any of the above, try a web search. That should give you a breed association and they will have a breeder listing.

-- Kathleen Sanderson (stonycft@worldpath.net), October 14, 2000.

Hi, I've just started raising Angora rabbits and hope to get Angora goats soon. Have made no money at it yet but love the bunnies!!! I'm hoping to learn to spin their wool myself. I've checked on Alpacas through some magazine articles and stuff and they do seem to be quite expensive. But if you can get a breeding pair and raise little ones you would probably get your investment back fairly quickly...but there's always the chance of illness, death. etc. So I wouldn't invest my last dollar....

We're trying to diversify so our income comes from several different areas...then if one thing is slow or doesn't do well, we won't have a catstrophe and can count on something else to pull us through...

-- Suzy in 'Bama (slgt@yahoo.com), October 14, 2000.


I had the pleasure of visiting a alpaca ranch In santa cruce a couple years back. Thay are adorable sweet soft animals and there fiber is heaven to spin! I think you can pick up pet quality ones fairly cheap and If you only want them for fiber not breeding that would work for you.I dont know how much but you could call a few breeders and find out.

-- kathy h (saddlebronc@msn.com), October 15, 2000.

Right now Alpacas require a pretty good investment for stock. While comming down, Was $50K a few years ago, A good alpaca will run $10-20K today.

You might want to look at llamas as a alterative for fiber. While not quite a soft was alpaca they do produce some nice fiber at a lower investment cost. Llamas tend to be larger and produce more fiber as well. Figer $1k-$5k for top end fiber producers.

-- Gary (gws@redbird.net), October 16, 2000.



Llamas are great - relatively cheap animal to raise, compared to other pasture animals. Just do your homework, visit llama farms, visit websites - people have done some poor breeding, and are selling them for cheap - a poorly bred llama may not have the quality of fiber you are looking for, temperment, etc. But with the right llamas they are wonderful. I found the websites and local good quality llama farms to be very helpful - if they aren't helpful, it's a sign you don't want their llamas!

-- Julia in Tally (tofubiscuit@excite.com), October 18, 2000.

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