Us on a good day :-) Us on a good day :-)

Like most people over 50 we decided that we had to have a retirement strategy…you know…something that would ease you into retirement, keep your mind active, give you multiple facets of interaction (people and animals) and keep the acreage grass down. Our choice also had to be gentle on us physically and easy to handle – we weren’t getting any younger.

I was tired of being pushed about by the cows and whilst my Clydesdales are gentle giants, they are still giants that weight a ton. So…that meant no extra horses, no more cows and no more sheep, specifically the cows and sheep because I have a dilemma when it comes to killing animals for food. My animals had names and I just couldn’t bring myself to send them off for slaughter. My husband would just shake his head.

So we arrived at the concept of trying Alpacas, mostly because my mum loves them and she had come to stay. I purchased our first two huacaya several years ago on the premise that if they lasted a year and were easy to look after, didn’t hurt the property, didn’t create chaos and managed to survive my learning process then we would expand. I loved that no one walked around calling them neck chop or roast.

The year went past, and then some and all was good. However, the day that I saw a golden Suri was the day that I actually fell in love with alpacas. I was so taken with this beautiful golden girl that I bought her and she marked the start of our serious venture into alpacas.

We now have a fully coloured herd from whites to fawn, gold, brown, black and grey in suri’s and huacayas. Our aim to is produce fine fleece animals, especially in the suri line and to produce beautiful, quiet and gentle, halter trained huacaya for lifestyle change people.

This year we started showing our animals and fleece for the first time and it has been gratifying to find that the research that we put in and the purchases we made have paid off in the show ring and the fleece competitions. This validates that we are on the right track for us.