Heritage Farm Alpacas & Events, LLC

Heritage Farm Suri Alpacas is happy to offer our new "Getting Started" guide. This downloadable 50-page guide will answer many questions you have about raising alpacas for fun and profit. Some of the topics covered include:

Defining your herd objectives

Basics of Alpaca Fiber Structure

Measuring Fiber Qualities

Planning Farm Infrastructure

Capital Equipment Considerations

Understanding Alpaca Health and Nutrition

Introduction to Genetics

Preparing for Breeding and Birthing

Checklist for an Action Plan

Starting an alpaca farm is a big decision. We want you to be well equipped to fully understand what the alpaca business is all about before you buy your first alpaca. Combined with talking to alpaca owners, going to educational seminars and getting your hands on several alpacas, this guide will help determine if alpaca ownership is right for you and provide you with some basics for getting started.


To give you an idea of what is included in our "ALPACAS - a Getting Started Guide", below is the Table of Contents.

Introduction

Breeders’ Market vs. Fiber Market

Why Alpacas and What to Do With Them?

Owning Alpacas as Pets

Owning Alpacas for Fiber Production

Managing a Small Scale Alpaca Operation

Becoming an Alpaca Industry Leader

Focusing on Genetic Improvement through a Herdsire Operation

Putting it all Together

Define Your Strategy

What are they?

Herd Objectives

Fiber Structure

Differences between Suri and Huacaya Fiber

Follicle and Fiber Types

The Correlation between Density and Fineness

Fiber Criteria

The Histogram

Staple Length

Micron Count

Standard Deviation

Co-efficient of Variation

Comfort Factor

Breeding Goals

Culling

Farm Infrastructure

Fencing

Gates

Guard Animals

Shelter

Video Monitoring

Land

Pastures

Clean-up

Infrastructure

Equipment

Office/Lab equipment

Supplies

Show and Event accessories

Health and Nutrition

Veterinary and Health Care Supplies

General health

Teeth and toenails

Conditioning

Genetics

Mendelian Genetics?

Line breeding or inbreeding?

Selecting Your Foundation Herd

Breeding Methodologies

Breeding and Birthing

Breeding Methods

Confirmation of pregnancy

Birthing

Conclusions

The bottom-line

The next step

What Heritage Farm has to Offer

Action Plan

Suggested Bibliography

Glossary

Endnotes