Alpaca's worth the Price?

[qtkitty]

Yes, i will admit it i am drawn to them they are just TOO CUTE!! BUT are they worth the begining price. I have been reading and researching and reading. Everything that i have read has said that alpaca is well worth the investment if you breed them. Is that really true if is it just a way for people to get you to buy their animals?


Alpaca fiber its self is only about $30 a pound ( given this is the lowest i found for a "coarser" grade i believe) and an alpaca can be shorn once a year and give 3-10 pounds of fiber. So that is basically $150 a year.

They say that a herd of up to 10 alpaca can live on one acre, although some articals say differently. They also are easy to clean up after since they go in 1-3 small areas in their pasture. Start up cost according to Alpaca Owners and Breeders Association are something like this:

Acquisition of one pregnant female and one young female $ 35,000
Insurance on animals, one year $ 1,100
Equipment $ 500
Small barn and fences $ 30,000
One year's feed $ 300
Veterinarian and miscellaneous reserve $ 1,100

TOTAL
$ 68,000
[Costs are rough estimates for comparison purposes only. Actual costs may be higher or lower than figures depicted, depending on a wide variety of factors such as geographic location, available pasture, climactic conditions, health of animals, etc.]

Sounds to me like the only way to make any profit at all from Alpacas is to breed them. As i have been reading i have read that "medium quality, medium cost " females can be the beginings of the bulk of the herd and then a "high quality, higher cost" male or a stud servicing with a "high quality, higher cost" male can result in "show quality" babies which will fetch higher dollar amounts then their mothers.

Females have 11.5 month pregnancy, so that would be a year til a baby was even born then weaning at closer to 6 months. If it is a female it would mean keeping it to breed which it will take 12-18 months for them to be old enough to mate. I guess over 5-10 years that would build into a profitable herd.

Then there are also tax benifits.

I still do not know if it is actually profitable though, in terms of farming are they profitable. And can you get people to buy them once you are looking to sell?

[RichZ]

Michelle, in my opinion, alpacas are a shell game. My wife and I looked into them. With all the ads telling you how much money you can make, it's very tempting. But check out the market for the fiber. There is none. They say how you can sell the fiber for big bucks, but check to see if there is a market near you. In all likelyhood there is none.

The only way people make money with alpacas is by selling the crias (babies) to other people who are convinced that they'll make big bucks. That's why I call it a shell game. Since there is no real market for the fiber, this business of selling crias to other people to make millions will eventually bottom out.

It's sort of like the emu trade several years ago. Emu eggs were going for hundreds of dollars apiece and chicks were going for thousands. When it turned out that there actually was very little market for the emu meat and eggs, the whole shell game just bottomed out. I'll let Bird explain what happened to the emu market, he saw the whole thing first hand in Texas.

I think what happend with emus will eventually happen with alpacas.

The same thing happend with llamas. Everyone said how much their fiber went for, but there was no market. Now you can get llamas for hundreds instead of thousands of dollars. I intend to get a llama this year for a guard animal for my goat herd. I know several farms where I can pick up a good guard animal for no more than $500.

If you think alpacas are cute (and so do my wife and I), save your money and wait a while. The prices will come way down. We'll probably get a few as pets when the prices come down.

[ObedienceGoldens]

Rich is right..
There is a big Alpaca farm here in NY.. We went up to talk to them..
Sounds really good.. then we did some research....
No fiber mills around here

There is absolutely no prophet in the fleece even at the high prices today.
Say it brings $40.00 a pound. You only get three to 5 lbs of fleece from each animal.
Figure out the cost of feed and vet bills and supplies.
Not to mention the investment in barn and pasture and you will see that there is no way
to come close to even breaking even.

[Bird]

Yep, Rich, some folks just killed off their emus to get rid of them, and some were known to just open the gates and turn them loose to get rid of them.

Personally, I liked raising rabbits, but you have a similar problem with finding a market for them. I happen to be quite fond of rabbit meat, but how often do you see it in a grocery store? I started by buying a buck and two does, eventually had 15 cages and raised over 300 rabbits. I sold a few and ate a lot of them. [img]/forums/images/icons/laugh.gif[/img] I could sell everything I had to feed stores in the month before Easter, but very little market the rest of the year. The folks I bought my first breeding stock from said a truck used to come regularly from a processing plant in San Antonio to pick up the live rabbits, but then they went out of business still owing the breeder over $3,000. So now their only market is selling to kids for the 4-H and FFA. You aren't going to sell enough to make any money that way.

[qtkitty]

I thought that was weird to that they were trying to say the fibers would make the profit .. but no it is the breeding that does it.. of course neutered males go for $1000 some times for 2 of them, but the $300 a year price tag and the Maybe $150 a year you might make on just fibers does not make since, unless you are making clothes out of them, but then Heck just buy the fiber. Geeze.

Thats what i was thinking .. i would rather just stick with my rabbit plan. Basically they say you can make a profit with in a year if you live with in an hour of a rabbit processor( i am in the south east now .. but the closest processiong plant is 2 hours away which does $1 for fryers(4.5-6lb) and i believe $0.60 for roasters( 6lb+) not to mention that they are looking for growers because they can not meet the demand). Of course not having a farm yet leaves me at an advantage to relocate where there is a good demand. From everything i have read the rabbit market is getting good in the South East, because of chef and high end resturants. Gas prices now would make it not worth it unless you had a big shipment going and were very very close to the processing plant.

With rabbits it seems open to more diversification as well so it seems with the meat, feet, wool, furs, and show/pet market.

Pasture raised Deer are the same way there isn't really a market for them except in high end resturants. Supposedly you can make good money off of them if you can find a market as well.

[Stoneheartfarm]

The people we talked to did not say that the fiber would make the profit. What they said was "The fiber is highly prized by home spinners."

Since we don't know any home spinners and weavers, I don't know if this statement is true or not. But, even if they DO prize it, that doesn't mean they'll pay anything for it.

My guess is that you've got a few years yet before the fad fizzles out. Simple supply and demand. When there are enough breeders to supply the number of Crias desired, the market will sag and the breeders will take less in order to sell animals. Eventually, you'll be able to buy that 10k "value" alpaca for a couple of hundred bucks.

I couldn't find any market for the meat, fiber or anything other than the Crias. I talked with one breeder you has been picking up "rescue" animals to build a herd. Buying some at auctions for under $1,000.00. She's lost a couple to illness, but the rest have done alright. I did find out that there are different colors and types of fur and what is in today may be out tomorrow.

[Pat]

Alpacas, especially the young are cute. Lets see: llamas first then alpacas... I see the trend!!!

GET IN ON THE GRUND FLOOR FOLKS.....It is the next big craze (no not glow in the dark shoop shoop whistling hoola hoops...)

Yet another pyramid sheme. Viacuna (sp?) Yet another South American camelid, a cousin of the llama, alpaca, and camel. Remember you heard it here first folks!!!

There are a few emus living in the wild in Oklahma. One less now that the novelty wore out after several months at a friends farm. Emu just showed up and wanted to be fed. Got very demanding about being fed. Got very nasty about being fed, Got very dead.

[img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img] Pat [img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

[wingnut]

Michelle .... the current alpaca "fad" echos that of the ostrich and the emu, and other exotics.
Look at the initial ostrich scenario:
To justify the extremely high prices for "breeding pairs", the seller points out what eggs are worth, what artists pay for eggs, how much a pair of boots with ostrich skin sells for, how every part of the bird can be sold - feathers for hats and art, eggs for crafts, etc, etc, etc ... and then they tell you how much the meat retails for. Oh, and how much you can sell breeding pairs for... [img]/forums/images/icons/laugh.gif[/img]
So ... you check it out and can't find a single person paying $50 for an egg, find almost nobody selling the meat 'cause nobody's buying, find out that you can indeed pay $1200 for a pair of full quill booots ... but you can also buy them at fire sale prices .... and pretty soon the math tells you that you will NEVER get close to breaking even, much less making a profit.
As Pat said ... if you are the first one into this ponzi scheme ... you should do OK ... as long as you also remember to get OUT before the saturation point gets close.

My wife also thinks they're the cutest thing since miniture horses were invented ... but I quickly put my foot down. Sure, if you go to the state fairs you'll see handcrafted alpaca stuff for sale .... but how many are buying? I guess if you can get one/some cheap, and like to shear, spin and card the wool yourself, and enjoy making things .... it might be a fun hobby. But, as a "career" .... you're coming to the gate way too late as the saturation point is behind us already.

pete

[qtkitty]

I think it would definately be interesting to have one as a pet/side hobby when they are a hundred or a few hundred.

They are definately cuter then Llamas * shudders * those guys can be mean cusses !!

[wingnut]

Oh, they are cute, for sure. I'll just hope that it's a while before they get down to the "few hundred" mark .... the miniature horses keep me busy and poor enough for now! [img]/forums/images/icons/smirk.gif[/img]