Becoming involved in the alpaca business can be a life changing experience. It often begins by falling in love, maybe not in the romantic sense, but almost. When people see their first alpaca or maybe just an alpaca image on TV or in a magazine, something clicks. They are intrigued. They begin to inquire, search the internet, travel to a nearby alpaca farm, and slowly, but surely, their life changes.
Soon they are dreaming of a farmhouse in the country or of renovating that unused barn on the five acres behind the house. A young mother with children begins to wonder, can I really become self employed in the alpaca business? An older couple might ask, can this be what we are going to do when we retire? A professional man says to himself, can we really make a living in the alpaca business?
I have been raising alpacas for seventeen years and I think I have some answers to these questions. Alpacas.com is meant to be a resource for people who seek educated answers to the questions above. We offer help with alpaca business plans and farm plans. We help our clients use science and classic genetic breeding theory to increase their profit potential. We teach people how to select superior stock and how to market their production. Hopefully, in the end, people who become involved in the Northwest Alpacas Network will become successful alpaca ranchers.
Alpaca Business Plan
An alpaca business plan should answer the following questions and contain the following elements:
- Which alpaca breed do you intend to own, huacaya or suri, or both?
- The identification of your market niche.
- When do you require income from the herd?
- How much income does your family require from the enterprise?
- A breeding plan.
- A farm expense budget.
- Will you pay cash or buy on terms?
- The tax benefits of alpaca ownership.
- A marketing strategy.
Creating a Farm Plan
Designing a safe, well-organized plan for adding barns, fences, and accessory buildings is crucial to your success in the alpaca business. At Northwest Alpacas we have helped hundreds of people get started right.
We can give you practical advice on selecting the ideal location, the type of fences you will need, the size of gates, which type of pasture to plant, how to build effective shelter, where to place water troughs, how to select hay, layout your barn, protect against predators, and dispose of manure. About the only thing we won't do is scoop the poop. So call or email Fred (fred@alpacas.com) today and find out how we can help you get off on the right foot.
Animal Selection
One of the most critical decisions you will make involves selecting your breeding stock. If you learn nothing else from this article or our website, please learn how to select stock before you spend the money you have budgeted for animal acquisition.
New breeders have a unique opportunity to position themselves at the forefront of the industry by selecting animals that have superior traits. Knowledge of these traits and how to select them is often the difference betweens success and failure in the alpaca business.
For instance most new purchasers come to our ranch knowing what breed and what color of animal they want to select but few are looking at several, even more important issues:
- What pedigree they would like to have in their purchase
- To whom is the animal they are buying bred
- Who will they be bred to in the future
- To whom the alpacas will their purchase offspring be bred.
The answers to the above questions can be even more important than whether or not the alpacas exhibit good fleece and conformation traits. At Northwest Alpacas, Fred and myself spend a lot of time educating our clients as to what they should look for in their breeding stock.
Whatever you do, take a little time to educate yourself before you spend your money. Remember you're going to be in the alpaca business for a long time.
Marketing Strategy
At Northwest Alpacas we believe that marketing is one of the most crucial elements necessary for the success of any alpaca breeder. I can tell you with 100% certainty that if you do not let people know that you have alpacas for sale, you will not sell any.
The first step to understanding how to market alpacas is to learn: 1) who buys alpacas in the first place; 2) how buyers find out about alpacas and where they go to buy them; and 3) what sales strategies work in today's marketplace.
Northwest Alpacas Network
Another question you should ask any breeder that you buy stock from is: what are you going to do to help me after I buy these alpacas from you? At Northwest Alpacas we have an answer to that question. Everyone who buys stock from us becomes part of our network. This means we offer comprehensive after sale resources.
If you have read this far, I hope we have added value to your alpaca journey. A friend of mine once told me that he had figured out why he loved raising alpacas so much. When I asked why he replied that he thought "God had intended all of us to be 'shepherds.'" Another answer to the riddle of why so many people are deciding to be alpaca farmers might lie in the observation made by a famous medical doctor who developed the highly profitable "Beefmaster" brand of beef. When he was asked why he decided to be a cowboy, he replied "I have known a lot of doctors that wanted to be cowboys, but I have never known a cowboy that wanted to be a doctor."