ON FARM

We honestly cannot ever remember being busier as alpaca farmers. We are not using that as excuse because of our tardy communication BUT if you are in business and not busy something is amiss!!

We have added another mile of exterior fencing, divided that into interior pastures, ran drainage through it, built a 60 x 30 barn, facilitated three quarantine areas and finished off two 150'x 60' cria pens where mothers and new born cria are housed until the cria are doing well. We covered that with a big weather shelter. These pens run into our Las Madres (late term female) barn where we have installed a twenty five foot long propane fired radiant heater. The cria absoluetly love it on these bleak winter days. Often we'll see 10-12 cria snuggled up next to one another under the heater. We installed this heater because we want these winter born babies to be putting their energy into growing rather than trying to stay warm. It requires a lot more management having these winter cria and we have decided, as nearly all NE and NW farms have, to limit births between November and March. It's a lot of work and too much of a struggle for the babies.

The establishment of the quarantines is a big step for us. It means we can export to New Zealand and Canada and also gives us an area to set up our embryo transfer lab where we can collect and ship off embryos in the future.

This month I have been hosting British buyers on four different occasions. This is an important new direction...we don't want to just market to existing US breeders and newbies...we want to diversify to create demand. the qurantines make it easier for us to ship these animals for the UK and Europe up to Canada where they have direct routing to the UK.

During the summer we limed fields at two tonne to the acre, spread fertilizer, aerated all the pasture, cut 100 tonne of grass hay, birthed down 80 cria, re dug all our drainage channels and planted 2000 Aussie eucalypt trees that are still growing despite the cold and wet!!!

And this is just the on farm stuff. We attended four large alpaca shows where we did really well   http://www.pucara-alpacas.com/shownews.html

and Jude judged eight alpaca shows in the US plus the Aussie nationals in October and the New Zealand Nationals two weeks later.

You all should be excited that we have finally after a lot of hesitation employed someone to help in the office. This is a big step for two people who have always done everything themselves. We've tried to keep things trim because after all we are just a farm but after some agony finally made the big step. And we have found an absolute gem. Sharon started three weeks ago and is already showing her worth saving Jude a heck of a lot of time updating our HerdLogic animal database, catching up with the books andwill soon start helping me doing the webpages for our website.

For those of you who have not visited we now have our farm manager Al Plinz and four farm hands. There are over 380 animals on farm now so thats a lot of alpaca poop!!!, a lot of breedings, shots, worming, weighing, toe nail clipping etc etc etc. We also have a good friend who bought some alpacas from us (he is a retired record producer from LA!!!) helping out two or three days a week.

You may have read about the floods over here a few weeks back. It was a little wet under foot. Our five foot wide creek was a raging river more than 150 yards wide...we had to ferry the workers across the flood but essentially we had no damage...its just bloody muddy...thus the name of our valley...Muddy Valley! You can see from the picture that it got wet.

HUSBANDRY

It has not been an easy year looking after alpacas. There has been an outbreak of an illness that has been affecting alpacas nation wide. They are calling it " Chronic Respiratory Syndrome "and whilst we have had some deaths we don't believe any died from this. Many farms say they have had deaths. When it appeared here we had several cria with very high temps and very snotty noses which we managed to fix. Poor old Tim had a similar deal at his farm in Ohio but the illness was expressed in the lower respiratory tract causing pneumonia. To his credit he only lost one cria.We were lucky here because the illness was only evident in the upper respiratory tract therefore could be spotted earlier (you could see the gobs of snot). On top of that we had a bout of Leptosporidia which we or the area had never seen before. This was ugly. We had some alpacas loose late term pregnancy or in fact abort their cria. We were distraught and even though the necropsies we did revealed no evidence and the biopsies showed very low levels we vaccinated anyway...and guess what...not another problem, thank goodness!

Having said that in the end it wasn't too bad of a year. Our sex ratios of born cria manged to pan out to about 50:50 although I know the three barns had less than that ratio. It just means we have to wait because in the end over a large number of animals the ratio works itself out.

Jude and I have made  dedicated decision to reduce the animals on this property to animals that we own or part own which of course includes the alpacas that belong in the three barns. Apart from one or two loyal clients with a handful of animals we are managing just the above so you should know there is an emphasis in our thoughts in respect to your alpacas, not only in management but in marketing and sales.

JUDE

The boss is a very busy woman. Apart from the shows that she judges nation wide and overseas Jude spends a lot of time training other judges, co-writing the judges' training manual and helping organise the show guidelines and judging rules. It is her passion and she is very good at it, bringing to the table exceptional fleece analysis skills that she learnt traing as a Wool Classer in Australia.

On farm Jude overseas all the husbandry management and animal care. Al Plinz our manager conducts all that with Jude or under her supervision. Jude also updates all our records (now with Sharons help) and adminsters all the book keeping.

AL

Well, I spend my day trying to avoid Starbucks! These days I hardly spend any time out on the farm where I am at my best, or should I say happiest. I spend most of my day answering emails, the phone, editing the website, promoting, procurring sales and plannning our herd breeding.

It is not what I enjoy but we know we have to get our image out there and breed very good alpacas that will sell well in the market place, so that's what I do. Especially now. The industry is at a cross roads that is regulated by supply and demand and as we have learnt by studying other livestock industries you must breed from the best genetics and produce animals that are perceived as the best....and you must put them out there. You could have the best alpacas in the world but who knows if they have never heard of you.

One of the major ways we promote and market ourselves is via our series of seminars that comprises of two major formats, one for business planning of an alpaca farm and one more based on selection and breeding. We get an average of 15 people to each seminar and really try to get newbies along. Why preach to the converted, right? We attract sales to eaxisitng breeders via the show ring and our branding so running these seminars brings a lot of people into the business. Sales are very good from them especially on the right hand side of the country. We are currently scheduling a series for 2008 that roughly doubles the number of seminars which is a result of us situating more seminars at Tim's far. One of the very pleasing things about the " Planning for Profit"seminar that we run is that Nick and Sarah from Dolan Group participate and add so much knowledge and professionalism to the seminar. It is something Tim and I really appreciate.

Just recently I ranan email campaign letting people know that although everyone is telling them that there are tax advantages to alpaca purchasing that they should talk to the experts who know how to interpret the law.....of course th expertsare Nick and Sarah and as a result they were etting three to four phone calls a day of inquiry. The have had to dedicate a staff member to deal with the inquiries.

All this spells positive for the barn members. Ok, you have you tax credits from this alpaca purchase but in the end if we can't sell your production you won't be too happy! Neither will we! Although there are signs of maturation in the industry our efforts of promotion are driving sales.

THE INDUSTRY

There has been am absolute proliferation of alpaca auctions, nearly one very weekend, that right now is denting on farm sales. But buyers are slowly waking up and not getting sucked into the emtional grab but as a result auction prices look low. The fact is when breeders put up good animals they get good prices as per the Snowmass, Pacific Crest, Breeders Choice, Futurity and National auctions.

On farm we have good sales. It was very quiet mid year but the past few months have been strong for both breeds. We have also sold herdsires to go to Britain and Australia. The one area where we will see a down turn in price will be the gelding quality males because of the supply. Jude and have sold a handful lately for $250-$500 which is what other breeders were asking.

One thing I have been happy with is the quality of some of the Barn cria. Do not ever expect me to sing glowingly about the cria born to the Barns. That is very misleading. But I think in most cases there was improvement and we may even have some heathy show prospects. I know that the cria produced once mature will sell well into the marketplace based on current trends.

One of the things I am working on right now and it has been a result of talking with Paul Fiore from Barn Three is to implement on the Barn web pages a snap shot of each years pregnancy status and the result so you can follow from pregnancy to birth each alpacas progress. That way you can assess how each animal is performing and how breeding fees should be applied. This will take a few days as we have to find a way that is easy to download the info and can be esily interpreted. It will most liely be an excell sheet in PDF format.

TWO OF YOUR BARN CRIA AT TIM'S

TIM AND ANITA  Beachwood Creek Farm

Frankly I do not know how Tim does it. He works long hours with First National Bank then spends the rest of the waking day and weekend doing the alpaca thing plus fits in a very cosy family.

We have conducted two very successful seminars at Tim's with strong sales and we plan to hold at least 6 -8 seminars over there this coming year. Partly because of Tim's impeccable standing and partly because of demographics in the east of the country we are getting seminar attendees from many East Coast states who convert into ownership.

Its also great to see Tim and Anita hire help for the farm. Poor Anita was out there every morning and night before and after her school teaching as a speech therapist raking alpaca poo!

Here's some thoughts from Tim:

"I would characterize 2007 as a very full, growth year for us and I’m happy with many of our accomplishments. Like any business in a growth mode, you have to adapt your focus and strike a balance between internal operations and external reach. While there are always things we’d do differently, as I look back over the last twelve months, I feel good about all of the things we’ve accomplished and have a list of all the things we need to improve.

Since last December, we expanded our pasture areas to include about 10 acres of additional grazing area and purchased an additional fifteen acres of land where we will install pastures for grazing and hay production.

We also added another hay barn and are in the process of constructing a weanling barn, which will allow us to better separate animals based on age, gender and nutritional requirements.

As you know, many of the females here were bred in the late months of the year and will birth down in October and November next year. We have plans to install a “warm room” in the main barn, which we will use to safely birth the cria that will come in cold months.

We feel good about the space and facilities we have here and will continue to add capacity and employ sound animal management practices to safely support the herd.

I think everybody knows Anita and I enjoy having a lot of energy and we love to be involved in every part of our business. However, it became clear to us about mid-year that we can’t do everything. So, we hired some very good people to help with the farm chores and book keeping.

While Diane is doing a good job with the books, I have to say Michelle is the most meticulous person we’ve ever met and when she is done with her chores, even the dirt looks clean.

One of our major, ongoing strategies is to create a brand and client following that will support our sales goals in coming years. We do this in a number of ways including direct mail advertising, networking at shows and by conducting on-farm events.

As mentioned by Al, we are very pleased with the response to our seminar offering. By leveraging the diversity of our collective expertise, we are able to offer a unique educational experience. Both seminars we well attended by alpaca newbies and existing breeders from all over the mid-west and resulted in a number of new client relationships.

We’re very excited about the seminar’s potential to drive sales in 2008 and beyond.

This year’s cria are growing and like every livestock producer in the country, we were not immune to the respiratory virus that touched every farm. Unfortunately, one of our cria fell victim to the virus. We were able to avoid additional losses by being vigilant and treating cria as they showed signs of stress.

We’ll continue to evaluate the cria and determine if any are of show quality for the 2008 show season. A few look pretty good but they’ll have to mature before we will know for sure."