Research

I guess I should begin at the beginning. How did I decide to invest in alpacas? I was speaking with someone who has become a friend and she told me about her alpacas. She also invited me to visit the ranch where hers are agisted (lay term: boarded). While waiting for her to come back from vacaion, I began my research online and loved everything I read. By the time I went with her to the ranch, I was sold.

That's probably why is wasn't hard for me to decide to buy Keona especially since her brother was thrown in. Look at those faces, why could you not fall in love? And when I saw Michael and Ewok together and how much they cared about each other I knew I couldn't separate them. But emotions aside, alpacas and having an alpaca farm is a business and before I take over the care of my kids, I have a lot of things to learn and a lot of decisions to make.

I've already made some: my farm will be in Arkansas, I'm going to have a small herd, 25 at the most, and most of my herd will be suri (decision made by attraction - every alpaca I really liked except one was a suri). I still have a lot of research to do. I have to learn about the fiber end of this business and decide if I'm going to emphasize the fiber end of the business or the breeding side. I haven't learned enough about the fiber end but from what I've learned about breeding, I'm not 100% comfortable with it. But we'll see what the future holds.