Suri Alpacas of Gettysburg

Article by Helen Hornbake
Published in Alpacas Magazine Autumn 2006

You’re Never Too Old For Alpacas
by Helen Fritz Hornbake

The oldest in our group is 92, the youngest 60.

We are the “old folks” of the industry, though not a one of us feels a day past 30 if our lives with alpacas is any measure of youthfulness.

My husband and I started our alpaca farm in Gettysburg, PA, just two and a half years ago. He was 67; I was 62. “Why are you doing THAT?” our family members and friends asked. And if they didn’t ask, we could tell they were skeptical.

We knew why we were doing THAT, but we also wondered what brought others into the alpaca industry at an advanced age, or at least at an age when most of our contemporaries are selling their large homes and settling down to a stress-free, relaxing life. Thus this story. The only qualification to be a participant in this informal, unscientific survey was that one spouse needed to be at least 60 years old.

Lucy Farrar, 70, raises alpacas and is also very involved in educating other breeders. Her husband Charles, age 72 (inset) had a hip replacement. He has recovered and the couple plan to keep raising alpacas. They still work with the animals, do the birthing, give the shots, and do many other barn tasks.

Ed Boyd is now 92 years old. He purchased his first alpacas when he was 79, importing them before any of the official importations that are chronicled in alpaca books. He started The Double E Alpaca Farm in Bethel, New York in 1993. Formerly an international marketing executive, he traveled to Bolivia, Chile, and

Peru with two of his children on what was to be simply an educational expedition. But he fell in love with the first alpacas he saw in Chile and, “I could not resist buying them,” he explains. His first herd of 13 alpacas was quarantined for 60 days in Chile and another 30 at the U.S. quarantine station in Newburgh,

NY, before he brought them home. In partnership with his son, Brandon, he now has 70 alpacas – 56 huacayas and 14 suris. Ed admits that his family initially wondered “what in the world you do with alpacas. They thought I was crazy.” But now they all love and care for them and also have built up a popular and successful “alpaca boutique” at the farm. Not far behind Ed was the inimitable Jan Davis, now 83, who established her well-known Derwydd Alpacas in Esparto, CA, in 1995 at the age of 72. An inspiration to those of us just getting started and making the usual new breeder mistakes and miscalculations, Jan admits that her first two purchases back then were two alpacas of very inferior quality. “That’s how much I knew about alpacas,” she admits. But she grew in her knowledge and conviction that she wanted to be a breeder of the very best alpacas, and in 1998 she traveled to Peru. There she paid well-known alpaca expert Julio Sumar $1,000 per day over a weekend to rate alpacas that were to be imported to the U.S. He rated them as “super,” A+, A, and C. Sumar rated some 25 animals as super, and she was able to purchase five of those. She was on her way. She now has 63 alpacas on her 50-acre farm.

Jan was active in every aspect of her farm operation until three and a half years ago when she broke her left femur in two places and then suffered a staph infection. Recently she had a total hip replacement. But she continues to do the accounting and bookkeeping, telephone work, and contracts for the operation. She also attends alpaca shows with her animals. Her daughter, Dale, who co-owns 40 alpacas with her mother, helps her run the farm. They also have outside farm help.

Where does she see this industry going in the future? “The alpaca industry is like any other industry. When the supply exceeds the demand, prices for alpacas will go lower but only for lower quality animals.” She believes that better animals will retain their value because people will always be looking to improve their herds.

While not among the pioneers, Janice Martin and Beverly Davydiuk, 87 and 85 respectively, were recommended by others for inclusion in this article. Both own alpacas, and both are actively involved in their upkeep. Janice Martin lives on the same property as her daughter and son-in-law, Pat and Bud Overmyer of Rustic Acres Alpaca Farm in Zanesville, OH. She has one wholly-owned alpaca, and is part owner with the Overmyers in several others. Her ability to help on the farm is a testament to her determination. “My mom is legally blind from macular degeneration and has some other health problems but that doesn’t stop her from working on the farm and during shearing.” She goes out to the barn every morning, except in the dead of winter, to help scoop beans and hand out hay. Even though her central vision is very distorted and shadowy, she is able to recognize the dark alpaca beans against the lighter colored dirt in the boys’ pasture, her daughter explained. Amazingly, she can drive a golf cart on the property. At shearing time, the Overmyers hand her the fleece and she helps by bagging it and marking the bags. “She is a big help,” Pat says.

Beverly Davydiuk is 85 and lives seven miles from her granddaughter, Denise Reiling, owner with her husband Ron of Reiling Ranch Alpacas in Burleson, TX, just outside of Fort Worth. Beverly has always lived a very active life, having served as a U.S. government analyst and has traveled throughout the world. By her most recent count, she has been on 67 cruises. So staying active with alpacas doesn’t strike her as all that unusual. “I’m not a stay at home grandmother,” she explains.

Beverly bought alpacas about four years ago because of her granddaughter’s enthusiasm for the animals and the lifestyle. She has five alpacas that she agists at the Reilings’ farm but she has her own farm name, Beverly Hills Alpacas. She welcomes her six-year-old great-grandson’s suggestions for alpaca names, and her herd now includes Bat Man, Robin, and Comet.

She loves to go to shows, although her family handles the alpacas in the ring for her. She has brought home two first place ribbons with her little herd. She also has already sold four alpacas, mainly through Internet contacts. Does she ever wonder whether her alpaca investment might not turn out well? “I have always invested in the stock market, and I am more comfortable with my alpaca investment than I was with the stock market,” she asserts. But the investment potential is not even a close second to her real reason for owning alpacas. She just loves them! After recent hip replacement surgery, Beverly spent several weeks recuperating at Denise’s house. “It was a complete joy to look out the window and see all those alpacas in the pasture,” she remembers. Denise credits her grandmother’s walks to the barn using a walker and then a cane with her speedy recovery from her operation.

New Horizons Suri Alpacas was the name Marie Brown, now 81, decided on when she started her alpaca venture in Havre de Grace, MD, on the farm of her daughter and son-in-law, Patti and Alan Anderson, owners of Wild Rose Suri Ranch. She was optimistic from the beginning that her investment would eventually pay off. “I did not have a lot of fears as I was seeing how the alpaca business works through my daughter and son-in-law. But I knew that it was not a ‘get-rich-quick’ venture.” Marie was convinced that, of all of the investments she’d considered, she could expect the best return from alpacas. “It has proven to be so thus far,” says Marie, who manages a herd of 15. Her goal is expressed in her hope to have more dark-colored female crias, already realized to a great extent as a result of her breeding decisions. Marie continues to work on the farm as she did when she was a young 76, but she admits that her osteoarthritis in somewhat limiting. “On the other hand, I get the exercise I need through daily chores with the animals.”

A Long-Running Operation

While there are few breeders who start with alpacas in their late seventies and eighties, it isn’t hard to find quite a few who start in their sixties and continue to operate their farms for many years. Lucy Farrar, known to many breeders at as a newly-elected Alpaca Registry board member, was 60, and her husband was 62 when they formed Front Range Alpacas in Monument, CO. Lucy also is well known as the lady who educated most of the alpaca community about the BVD threat after spending all of last winter dealing with the issue on her own farm. The spring of 2006 was one of watching and waiting and preparing for the worst during birthing season. But Lucy was undaunted in her determination to educate the industry through her tragic experience and emerge on top. “We feel good about the business and good about what we’re doing,” Lucy makes clear.

The Farrars started their farm 10 years ago when she and Charles were running a real estate company and one of their clients wanted land to raise alpacas on. They met the alpacas and learned about the tax advantages of ownership and soon purchased their first animals. Soon after, “the tax advantages were replaced by just liking the animals,” Lucy says. At one point a few years ago, the couple thought about selling because Charles had a hip replacement and Lucy was injured when a visiting alpaca was spooked and pinned her against the barn. But they’ve both recovered and plan on keeping the farm going. They still work with the animals, do the birthing, give the shots, and do other tasks with occasional help from their daughters who live a distance away. Lucy figures she’ll be 73 when her ARI term is over.

Mary Bell, age 72, says she bought alpacas in the beginning because, “I just liked the looks of them.” Now she says, “ I love them. I really love them. They are so gentle and quiet.” But she also admits that not everyone feels the way she does. Some would ask her in the beginning, “Why do you want them anyway?” She began her alpaca venture when she was 65.

Mary works daily with her alpacas – “about 36 hours a day.” She does all of the halter and lead training as well as some performance work, teaching her alpacas to go upstairs and down with aplomb. “I like to work with the alpacas. I don’t get tired of that… I’m definitely an animal person”. Mary wasn’t the only breeder to face such skepticism on the part of people who just don’t understand the alpaca mystique. Most of the participants in this survey met with some incredulity on the part of family members. But the breeders themselves felt very little hesitation.

“Once I did my homework, there was no hesitance, no fear, no trepidation,” says Dave Gronauer, now 68, who started in the alpaca business with his wife Marg, when he was 64. They now have “well in excess of 100 alpacas” using the farm name, The Suri Place. The Gronauers live in Akron, OH, and agist their primary herd at Alpaca Jack’s Suri Farm in Findlay, OH. However, they enjoy working hands-on as often as possible. They train and show their own animals, attending numerous alpaca shows throughout the year. Dave and Marg are concentrating their efforts on acquiring full Accoyo suri alpacas as well as champion colored suris. One of their specific goals is to maintain the viability of pure suri Accoyo genetics. “I believe that it is incredibly important to build on the legacy of Don Julio Barreda and to retain the pure Accoyo gene pool and fiber characteristics he has developed,” Dave says. Are they happy with their decision to do this alpaca thing, I asked. And the answer came easily, “Unequivocally. The alpacas, developing new friendships, the lifestyle, and being involved in a common interest with my better half all point to one of the best decisions we have ever made,” he insists while adding, “The financial rewards aren’t bad either.”

From across the ocean, came a quick response to my call for “older breeders” willing to share their alpaca story. Chuck Rademacher, a former Information Technology guru, started his career in the States, but moved to New Zealand with his wife Kathy in 1977 to accept a job as IT Manager for several major corporations. He retired in 2002, and Kathy, an Emergency Room nurse, works just one day a week off the farm. “I think she views the one day a week as a nurse to be a ‘day off ’ from alpacas,” jokes Chuck. Excusing himself for using a familiar cliché in the alpaca industry, Chuck explains that “we both fell in love with them” after seeing their first alpacas at a huge New Zealand agricultural show held at “Mystery Creek.” That is, Chuck remembers, they both fell in love with them until they heard the price for females. But the following Christmas, Chuck was short of ideas for a present for Kathy when he accidentally came across some alpacas on a friend’s website. “I surprised Kathy with a couple of alpacas for Christmas, and that’s where our alpaca career began”. Now just two and a half years later, Chuck and Kathy have 50 alpacas at Kaipara Pines Alpacas near Auckland, New Zealand. Chuck was 62 and Kathy was 61 when they started.

The couple does all of the farm work at this point. “We are in the business ‘boots and all’ doing everything to excess,” he admits. They have no outside help although Chuck admits that he sometimes wishes they did. They’ve done all of their own fencing, about four miles worth if you count the internal fences, and they built the barn and shelters themselves. Chuck and Kathy are well on their way, having sold several alpacas already.

Stories to Tell

The 60-something beginning breeders are not at all uncommon, I learned as my research for this article progressed, but some have stories begging to be told. Ruthann McVickers has a poignant and inspiring story to share. Ruthann and her husband, Jay, purchased their first alpacas in December 2002, but it was eight months until they were able to move onto their farm, JRAM Alpacas, LLC, and bring their girls home with their crias. Exactly one year later to the day, Jay was diagnosed with a brain tumor. He passed away in January 2005.

It wasn’t an easy time for Ruthann. “I met my husband when I was 13; he was 15. We married four years later. Jay and I would have celebrated our 45th anniversary last May. We sold the house we had lived in for 23 years to move to the farm and raise alpacas.” Ruthann remembers that Jay used to say that all his tiredness and cares dropped away when he reached the start of their driveway at the end of his work day. He was the salesman of the family “always ready to talk alpacas.” Jay wrote an alpaca newsletter to share news of their farm with about 100 people with whom he worked. “We made a good team as we each provided what the other lacked.”

Although she has help on the farm from her daughter and two grandsons who now live with her, Ruthann admits that sometimes she gets discouraged. “Finding out that the roof has been leaking and there’s dry rot in the bathroom, knowing that fence posts need to be replaced and not being able to do it myself, replacing a battery in the truck – those are the things that discourage me. It’s the taking on of all the responsibilities where before Jay and I shared them.”

But “working with the alpacas is never discouraging”, she says, and she is still happy with the decision to buy them. “The alpacas have been a ‘lifesaver’ for me since Jay passed away. Whenever I felt the urge to stay in bed and pull the covers over my head, I knew my girls and boys were waiting for me. The crias have provided me with hours of entertainment and laughter and have shown me the joy they feel at just being alive. To sit in a pasture and listen to alpacas grazing and watch their interactions relieves a lot of concern and worry.”

Another new breeder going it alone is Liz Siena, 62, who is just getting started and has not yet brought her first alpacas home to Clayton, DE, although she has already acquired two Great Pyrenees guard dogs and has installed the necessary alpaca fencing on her property. Liz’s husband passed away eight years ago, but her daughter, granddaughter, and youngest son live with her and will help with the alpacas in the near future.

She has identified three female alpacas, a herd sire, and a gelding that she will purchase from Patti and Alan Anderson, who live about an hour and a half from her farm. Until she can get her own alpacas, Patti has invited her to visit the Andersons’ farm whenever she needs “an alpaca fix.”

Like many would-be alpaca breeders, Cinda Young, 61, grew up with animals. She has been breeding, training, and showing Australian Shepherds for 20 years. She and her husband, Gary, started Driwind Alpacas in western Texas just last November.

Although she has lots of experience with horses, dogs, and cats, Cinda realized that “alpacas aren’t like any of these animals!” Her biggest concerns early-on was whether she was going to feed them properly, or have a cria or dam die during delivery. But she read everything she could find about nutrition, birthing crias, etc., while Gary crunched numbers with their mentors, Bruce and Jeri Beatty of La Buena Vida Alpacas in Anthony, NM. “Bruce is a good salesman,” Cinda notes, and within a few days of their first visit, he and Gary were discussing all of the advantages of alpaca ownership. They bought their alpacas the following month and started the farm officially in March 2006 with two borrowed males. Their girls arrived April 30. Does Cinda feel tied down to the farm? “I’m pretty used to being tied down because of the dogs,” she explains, and besides, “one trip to the pastures to visit with my girls reminds me that, like my two-legged sons, they are more important than anything. I really don’t mind staying home with them.”

Carolyn and Sam Milana, ages 60 and 67, respectively, took on the alpaca challenge in 2005, and their only regret is that they didn’t start sooner. “It’s a good thing to spend your retirement on,” Carolyn notes. “Hopefully, we didn’t get started too late.” (Not if Ed Boyd is any example!) They started with two pregnant females and have eight alpacas now. Their plan is to build up the herd to 10 or 15 breeding females. That plan will require a move in a few years, but they recently purchased more than 20 acres nearby. Was there anything that made them hold back before taking the plunge? Actually, no, says Carolyn. She and Sam have always loved animals, and Sam had seen the television alpaca commercials, as well as a number of documentaries about alpacas several years before they purchased their first animals. She does caution would-be alpaca breeders who are trying to make up their minds: “Make sure you are two people who are willing to work together. We are very compatible, but sometimes you (and your spouse) have differing opinions about the business. You have to work together”.

Sharon and Jim Dear started Dear Alpaca Farm in Potsdam, NY, in September, 2004. They hope to retire from their outside jobs in the near future. Jim is 60 and plans to retire in two years. Sharon, 50, hopes to follow close behind. If they are able to start selling by the time Jim retires, Sharon explains that she will then be able to vest her retirement with the state and retire at 53.

While the two look forward to retirement and the alpaca lifestyle, Sharon admits that their relatives wonder why they would retire “only to work more.” But Sharon explains that they were looking for something to do in retirement not just spend their days “playing golf or fishing.” They plan to keep their farm for 25 years and then turn it over to their son! Given the track record of a number of other breeders who started in their fifties, sixties and seventies, that is not an unrealistic goal.

Ruthann McVickers, a 60-something alpaca breeder, says working with alpacas is “never discouraging.”

Whatever it is that keeps us seniors young and in love with alpacas certainly figures in the lives of Allison and Denise Moss-Fritch who travel 150 miles each way almost every weekend to spend time with their agisted alpacas and monitor their activities. The name of their virtual farm is New Moon Alpacas. They live in Santa Clara, CA, and must agist while they care for Denise’s 93-year-old mother, who lives with them. Both have outside jobs. Denise is a senior technical writer for a medical equipment company, and Allison retired from her law practice and now works as a school teacher as well as a part time food service industry worker. But even with the grueling demands of full time employment they spend most Sundays with their alpacas, now numbering 18 huacayas and suris, beginning their weekly commute at 5:30 a.m. Sunday and returning long after dark. They hope to be on their own farm within a few years. It’s clear that there is a thread running through these stories of life on an alpaca farm. We mature members of the alpaca industry did our homework, studied the tax advantages and investment opportunities of alpaca ownership, listened to our friends tell us we were crazy, and wished we had started in the business sooner. For most of us, it’s just love of our alpacas – a happy addiction – that keeps us down on the farm. Someone put it very well for all of us: you only live once; live with alpacas.