Alpacas

The alpaca business. All I know about alpacas is that they seem to be cute and fun to be with. But there is a much bigger story to be told as I learned from Mark Niemeyer, owner of Gem State Alpacas. "We had a small farm, a growing family and we lived on 5 acres and had horses and like many folks, didn't get to ride them as much as we had hoped. We eventually sold the horses but still wanted an agricultural lifestyle for our kids to grow up in and around. My wife happened to come across alpacas and at the time I had no idea what they were. We did our homework, did some research, went to some seminars and realized that this would be good livestock to bring to the farm, something our kids could get involved with and appreciate. Because of their size and the nature of the animal, we felt this would be a great livestock to bring to the farm as well as good livestock from an agribusiness standpoint, we thought it would be profitable and so we made a first purchase. How many do you have? We started with three in 2006, they were bred females, and we are now up to 52. We have focused on all aspects of the alpaca. We have a breeding program so we do sell alpacas to people who want to get into the industry or are already in the industry and certainly the main focus for this breed is for the fiber. It is about as fine as cashmere and as we continue to improve the product in terms of quality and value, the value of the lease goes up as the quality improves. The primary focus is the fiber development.