Before they can be considered mainstream livestock, there needs to be a ready market for the products.
Were I to have a pack of alpacas, I would have no local source to sell the fiber, meat, or the animals.
With cows, pigs, and goats, there are local, scheduled sales. No guessing where to sell or what the market price is, the state publishes weekly average market prices on these livestock.
For now, this market is another Emu industry, sounds good and lots of hype, but the thrust of the market is for current owners to sell breeding pairs for profit. Once that market is saturated, it will collapse like the Emu market did.
I have a few llamas. Not alpacas. I have not found any market for the wool, though we must shear them each year. There is, however, a market for live animals.
No chinese looking at my animals.
They are fairly pleasant animals to deal with. Easy to handle and don’t eat much. The babies are the cutest things ever.
I thought that the alpaca bubble burst in the early 2000's. Did it reinflate?
Wrench, you bring up all of the things we have been saying here for years. That’s why we need to get the numbers of Alpacas up here in the U.S.
For the last 20 years the primary way of make money on Alpacas was by selling the Animals themselves amongst the Alpaca Breeders. You quickly run out of customers that way and as a breeder you need to bring more people into the business.
Now I and my wife are bringing in interest of the Alpacas into our area of Kentucky. And that’s work that may pay off in several years. (If the economy recovers!) I always emphasize that this is a long-term investment of time. money and energy. Do NOT expect a payoff in a year or two.
Our primary customers for our fleece and products at this time are “crafters” who tend to be small home-based business and people who like to knit and crochet with natural fibers.
There isn’t a meat market here in the U.S., primarily because there are so few animals to begin off with. Secondly there really isn’t all that much meat on them either.
Now I’ve talked to many of the local farmers and I’ve heard the horror stories of those who invested in Emu’s, Goats, etc. So they are justifiably cautious and more than a bit skeptical. That’s fine and I understand completely, but their reliance on Corn and Cows, (dairy and beef), as the crops that brig in the most money also means that their land is depleting itself of nutrients and they are relying more and more on artificial fertilizers and weed products.
That is really increasing their year-to-year costs and their profits are decreasing because of it. So they are looking for alternatives.
The advantages to the Alpacas is that you can have more of them per acre on average it’s six per acre, but some people have more. They don’t require much feed supplementation. I feed the girls one quarter cup each of “Alpaca Kiblets” a day. The boys don’t get anything extra. I only feed hay when the grass is marginal or during the colder part of the winter. A single square bale will feed twelve girls a for a day. Compare that to a bale or two for a single cow or a horse.
I also have to give them a worming shot once a month for the Meningeal worm which is carried here in the deer population.
Another of the reasons I chose to work with the Alpacas is that I don’t need heavy equipment such as a tractor and implement. I can do everything I need with a Utility Vehicle and a Wheel Barrow. If I do need to use heavy equipment I hire a local farmer or contractor to do that for me. (Which is tax deductible.)