Washing Alpaca

The way I wash alpaca fiber is simplicity itself.

1) Fill the container of your choice, bucket, sink or tub with warm water.

2) Add a small amount of dish liquid or shampoo, swish around.

3) Add fiber and swish it around. I find it is easier to put it in a lingerie bag before putting it in the water, but have done it without just fine.

4) When you think the water could not get more disgusting, drain the water, take out the fiber, and refill the container with the same temperature water. Swish the fiber around. This is a rinse. There will be many.

5) Repeat the rinse step until the water looks clearish after you have swished the fiber around. This is a matter of taste. I like my fiber super clean so keep going until I get that clear water.

See? Now wasn't that easy?

Alpaca Fiber 101

There has been talk on some of the email lists about what alpaca fiber is, what it does, and what it is used for.

First, let's start with what it is. Alpaca fiber comes in two different varieties as defined by the breed. There are huacayas, they are the fluffy ones and suris, these have the dreadlocks.

Huacayas have crimp. There are a many different styles of crimp within the huacaya. Think of all the different kinds of crimp with sheep breeds.

non-existent crimp,
low amplitude, low frequency crimp,
low amplitude, high frequency crimp,
high amplitude, low frequency crimp
high amplitude, high frequency crimp

The take home message is that if you want a certain style of crimp, ask the Shepherd what kind the alpaca fleece in question has.

The suri has no crimp, and is slick. It should also be shiny. Work with suri like you would silk or mohair. It has great drape.

Now softness is another question. Alpacas have quite the micron range, everything from 15 microns or less, to brillo pad. Again, ask the shepherd if you cannot get a sample or pet the fiber.

I have been spinning and knitting with alpaca for over 9 years. I have made socks, hats, scarves and a felted it. It has memory if you choose the correct fleece. You would no more expect silk to have memory, so why would you use suri and expect it to. If you are buying yarn, ask what kind of alpaca it came from. It does make a difference.

Alpaca Business Plan, Part 9 Executive Summary and other parts

The executive summary is quite easy now that you have finished the document. Keep the summary to a page. It is okay to go over and it is okay to just have one paragraph. What is important is to include the important bits. Let the person who is reading it know that you have done your homework, but don't give them minutiae. This is where the elevator speech comes into play. If you can tell the person what you are doing, why you are doing it, and how you will succeed in the time you have on an elevator, then you have done a great job.

Now add a table of contents. Most word processors will do this for you.

If you have a very long document, add an index in the back. Most word processors will help you with this.

The final piece is the cover page. This can be as elaborate or as simple as you wish. I put a picture of a cria, my logo, my name, address, phone number and the date of completion.

If there is a item that you think is important and I have not covered it, please add it to your business plan. I have tried to give you the framework on which to start. Good luck and I hope this helped.

Reflections on Tubing a Cria

Teddy's mom does not produce enough milk which sometimes happens with first time moms. The predicament came when he refused a bottle. He not only refused, but was adamant in his expression of disgust of the whole thing. After trying for 4 days to get him to drink and waiting to see if his mother produced more milk, we went to the vet for help.

The vet watched the mother and cria interact and came to the same conclusion we had. They were both doing their part, but there was a shortage of milk. Sometimes the cria will only nurse on a teat or two instead of all 4 cutting its own milk consumption. Or the mother may not stand for the cria to nurse his fill. Teddy was going to all 4 teats and his mother was standing for as long as he nursed. So a bottle was attempted and refused with much fanfare.

I went home after a brief class on tubing and a weight/ounces to feed chart. And two warnings:

1. Make sure it goes in the esophagus and not the lungs: the wrong one will cause death.
2. Be sure to crimp the tube as it comes out so that the cria does not breathe in milk. This can cause pneumonia and possibly death. Every time I tube the poor guy, I am super aware of it going down the left.

So here we are 2 1/2 months later and I can tube a wiggly cria by myself. I can pour 12 ounces into the tube and not spill much. Teddy is healthy and growing. It is such a relief and joy to see him playing with the other crias.

A feeding every three hours 6 am until 9pm sounds okay until you realize that, unlike a human baby, you can't take this one with you. So I plan outings around his feedings.

Teddy is weighed every day to ensure that he is getting enough milk. While the chart is handy, it is not always on the mark. Right now, for instance, he is drinking 84 ounces at 29 pounds and only making a gain of 0.2 or 0.3 a day. The chart says he would be 35 pounds to get this much milk. When he stalls, I add more milk in small amounts, or if it looks to be a large amount, I add an extra feeding. If you feed too much, the excess can cause problems and make the cria ill. You don't want to fill the stomach more than half full. This week he is getting fed every two hours in the morning and every three in the afternoon/evening.

I used the feeding syringes when I first started. That was great when he only had 4 ounces at a feeding. Now I pour into the feeding syringe (sans plunger) with a drinking bottle. Makes it easier to control the flow and wiggle factor. I am looking for an empty mustard/condiment container to feed with. I had purchased these for fiber dyeing, but can't find them right now. The tip fits into the feeding tube directly making the whole process easier.

I have a skill I never wanted to learn, but it is a valuable one. If a cria needs colostrum, I can tube it, if the cria refuses the bottle.

Alpaca Business Plan Part 8 - Financials

Here is the hard part. What do you want to count for and against your alpaca business? That is completely up to you and your accountant. However, I would like to suggest some areas to discuss.

Animal expenses:

Vet visits
CDT
worming
pellets
minerals
hay
fiber testing
ARI registration
Stud fees
Microchips
Tools ( shovels, rakes, etc)
Supplies (1st aid, feed and water buckets etc)
halters and leads
sharpening service
membership in associations
books, videos, and seminars
alpaca purchases
alpaca insurance

If you look at the IRS publication 225 ( Farmer's Tax Guide) you get a feel for the sections.

Income from a purely alpaca standpoint would be from breeding, and selling of animals. If you branch out, then there are many income ideas: fiber, seminars, books, herd sitting, agistment are just a few.

Alpaca Business Plan Part 7, Farm Information

The farm information section is where you detail the accomodations you have made for the alpacas.

Where do you buy your hay?
Who is your vet?
What kind of pastures do you have? What kind of grass is in the pastures?
What kind of fencing do the pastures have?
What kind of shelter is available?
What is their water source?
How will you manage the manure?
Who will do the daily labor?
Do you need insurance?
What kind of pellet/mineral mix are you using?

These are the same kind of questions that people ask new buyers to ensure a good home. I am sure there are more I could ask, but that covers the basics. If you think I left one out, please let me know.

HomeSpun Alpacas has ~3 acres in pasture. It is currently divided into 4 pastures, but we rearrange as needed. The pastures are fenced in with 2x4 horse fence, woven. The pasture provides the majority of feed, but we buy about 2 ton Orchard grass hay for 16 alpaca from the local feed store.

We provide 3 sided shelters in each pasture for the alpacas. There are trough feeders in the shelters to feed pellets in. The pellets are provided by Puget Sound Nutrition Group. Dr Waltner provides the makeup for our area. The water is provided in buckets in the pasture from a well on the propery.

We have 2 vets, husband and wife. Puget Sound Vet Clinic. They have a nice hospital facility and do make farm calls.

I do all the daily labor. My husband and son help on the weekends and nights as needed.

The manure is composted and used in our garden. We have not outgrown the compost output yet.

Alpaca Business Plan Part 6 - Herd Growth

Herd growth has many facets:
How many alpacas do you want?
How many are you planning on breeding every year?
How many will you keep?
How many will you sell?
What is your expected production rate?

What is the ideal number of alpacas for your farm? This could be the maximun number the land will support or the number of females necessary to produce the amount of alpacas you want to sell or the number of fiber boys you need to make product.

I first figured out how many alpacas I could reasonably support on the land. From that number, I worked on the number of females and males that would be ideal for my sales goals. Remember goals are just that, goals, so have a fall back plan if you don't make the sales you were expecting.

Northwest alpacas has a great herd growth calculator. You type in the number of alpacas you have now and it estimates the number you will have in future years.

You can see that the cria add up faster than you think. So have a plan in place to sell as you are growing. This does two things, it puts you in the marketplace and makes you practice marketing and selling. You learn what works and what doesn't before you find yourself in a position of having to make a sale. It also brings in new bloodlines if you buy to replace what you sell. If you don't plan on that, then it puts money in the farm budget.

Now is the time to think about what to do with the boys you will be getting. Will you show them, sell them as fiber boys, or keep a fiber herd? Just something to think about.

I would like a herd of 10 breeding females. If I get 50% boys, then I will need to sell 5 boys a year. I also need to sell 5 females to keep the herd at the ideal size. The females sold could be yearlings, pregnant maidens, and/or the production females. I also have some older females, so am planning on when they will retire to have a replacement in place.

As I am growing to that size, I am selling the females that don't fit my business plan and most of the boys. The number can't be written in stone because while statistics say there will be a 50/50 spilt, I have had years with all girls and ones with all boys. It works out in the long run, but to plan year to year for it is tricky.

Alpaca Business Plan Part 5 - Business Products & Services

The business products and services section is where you talk about what you are going to sell. First identify what your products and services are going to be. This may be repeated in the section on marketing, but it is a different slant than what we are focusing on here. Are you in the business to sell and promote fiber boys, fiber products, raw fiber, breeding females, herdsire services, or future herdsires? Huacayas or Suris?

Tell about your criteria for each one. What do you consider a herdsire? What would you consider to be prime blanket? Not all blankets are created equal, the 17 micron fleece will bring more per pound than the 35 micron fleece. What are your standards for an acceptable X?

Address anything unique about your services or products. Think of the people who raise organic vegetables, they detail what is unique about their product and show how it fits into a healthy lifestle.

The following is what I put down as my business products and services:

HomeSpun Alpacas will sell huacaya alpacas for the breeding market. We will also sell fiber and products made from their fiber such as yarn and blankets. We will focus on black.

Our fiber goals for fineness are detailed in the long term goal section.

Breeding Females
Breeding females should be the ones with fine crimpy fiber and correct conformation. They have easy births and plenty of milk. Their crias are healthy and strong.

Breeding Males
The breeding male alpacas also have the fine crimpy fiber and correct conformation. They produce crias that are consistently better than the dam and themselves. They come from a line of alpacas that produce healthy crias. Their fiber stays fine even with the onset of breeding and age.

Fiber Products
The fiber that the alpacas produce is warmer than sheep wool and generally considered stronger. It has been marketed as rivaling cashmere, and the truly fine fleeces do with a micron under 20. There is a wide range of fiber produced by an alpaca. The blanket is the prime and the most marketable. The neck is second. The leg and belly are thirds. Each of these kinds of fibers has their use in the market place.

• Prime The prime fiber is used for blankets, sweaters, scarves and hats. It is soft and able to be worn next to the skin.
• Seconds This fiber is used for socks and things that are not worn next to the skin. It is also used as felt.
• Thirds Thirds are used for rugs, insulation, and as weed barrier.

Alpaca Business Plan Part 4 - Goals

Short term goals are goals you want to achieve in a short period of time. I usually choose a year for this, but choose a time period that makes sense to you and your business.

What are you going to do this year to bring your alpaca business forward? Outside breedings, buy a herdsire, sell females or fiber boys, make business agreements with others for trading are just a few ideas. What do you need or want to avoid?

What do you want to achieve with your alpacas? Lower micron, higher shear weight, easy births, milk production, crimp style, color are examples. Also include things you would like to get rid of.

What marketing are you planning? Will it help you achieve your goals? Is marketing one of your goals? What do you want marketing to do for you?

What profits would you like to see? How might you go about producing a profit?

Brainstorm and see what comes up. Don't worry about reality just yet. Dream.

Goals are your destination, worry about getting there after you figure out where you want to go!

Now take all of your great ideas and write them up in a couple of paragraphs. It can help to make concrete, active statements like "We are selling three alpacas in 2010" rather than "We plan to sell three alpacas next year."

Long term goals just take that information a bit farther. Think 5 or 10 years down the line.

What would you like to see then?

What steps do you need to take to get there? What do you need to focus on?

HomeSpun Alpacas Short Term Goals

The initial business focus will be on quality (fleece and conformation) tame, halter trained alpacas. During the first two to three years, we will strive to improve the herd’s fiber.

During this time, we will also be breeding for black. To complement this objective, we will search out the most appropriate black herdsires to breed to our black females. We will also use finely fleeced and crimpy alpacas to bring down the micron and compliment the crimp in our brown females. They will be bred to the most appropriate male, regardless of color.

We will use males that dramatically improve upon the female’s crimp and decrease any guardhair.

Long Term Goals

It is the intent of the owners of HomeSpun Alpacas to build a fiber business selling yarn and products made from our own alpacas as well as building the herd of females to around 10 head.

Our breeding goals are:

• Soundness of body and limb
• Uniformity of fineness and extension of blanket fiber throughout the brisket, shoulder,
• hip, head, neck, and leg.
• Lack of medulation (low percentage over 30 microns)
• Luster or brightness
• Staple length (minimum of 3 inches a year, preferably 4 to 6 inches)
• Volume (the more finer fiber the better)
• Crimp
• Easy births and plentiful milk supply
  
• Good mothers (females)
• Settles females quickly (males)
• Mellow temperament

The fiber goals for micron counts are as follows:

Age Micron
Up to 12 months 16
1 - 2 years 18
2 - 3 years 20
3 - 4 years 21
4 - 6 years 22
6 - 8 years 23
8 - 14 years 26

To achieve our goals we need to:

• Make smart breeding decisions to produce the high quality fiber that is most marketable.
• The males chosen for breeding will have cria on the ground that are an improvement over either parent. The conformation will be correct and the crias will have the same correct conformation and be healthy.
• For the strong fiber, we will find a salable product to produce. Rugs, felt pads, and teddy bears are one of the options on the table as are quilt batts.
• Raise the herd numbers to be able to produce a quantity of fiber that can be made into enough product to not only support the alpacas, but make a profit.
• Refine a product line that will sell on the high end market. Currently focus is on yarn kits, blankets, shawls, and vests.

This focus will allow us to make a profit out of our poorest quality fiber as well as the high quality fiber ensuring there is no waste.

Alpaca Business Plan Part 3 - Mission Statement

A mission statement is a concise statement about your business' reason for being. Why did you start raising alpacas? What made you think that raising alpacas would be a good business to get into? What are you doing differently from the other farms? What makes your alpacas the "ones"? What are the values or beliefs that guide you raising alpacas? What kind of relationship do you want with your customers and alpacas?

Answer any, all or none of these questions as it suits you.

It should be short and memorable. If you can spell it out in that infamous elevator speech, then you have done well. If you can print it on the back of your business cards, you get the gold star.

Think of it as a tag line with some explanation. Leave out buzz words and fluff. State your goal and what makes you unique. Tell the world why they should do business with you.

I have listed some websites that have good ideas on how to write mission statements if you are stuck.

http://nonprofit.about.com/od/nonprofitbasics/a/mission.htm

http://www.tgci.com/magazine/How%20to%20Write%20a%20Mission%20Statement.pdf

http://www.entrepreneur.com/management/leadership/businessstrategies/article65230.html

Here is the first draft of my mission statement. I think it lacks some pizazz, so will be working on it as we go through the other steps

HomeSpun Alpacas' Mission Statement

HomeSpun Alpacas provides well-rounded support to its customers, from herd health to shearing to business plans, we are there for the customer. Our goal is to breed healthy, quality alpacas and develop a practical program of alpaca education.

For Thursday, think about your short term goals and next Tuesday we will work on long term goals.

Alpaca Business Plan Part 2- Farm Overview

Having taught Freshman English, I know starting is the hard part for most. So today we will start in the middle with the easy part: Your farm overview. This is a snapshot in time of what you own and where you are in the business. We will later put this information in the main body of the document and in the assets portion. It feeds into the financials too, but don't worry about any of that yet, that will be a later topic.

The first step is to list the resources you dedicate to alpacas, assuming you are raising alpacas on your own land. If you aren't, but would like to, skip to the next paragraph. If you plan to continue agisting, there are still some manner of alpaca accessories you own--these are important too. If you would like to go down the jungle trail, please turn to page 394. To the point: How many acres do you have total? How many are fenced for the alpacas? Do you have room to expand? What buildings are you using for the alpacas? If you are storing alpaca stuff in your garage, list that too.

Next, let's do a little prognostication. Are the land and pasture adequate for the present and next year? If not, what do you need to accomplish to make it so? If they are fine now, how about in 5 years? What would you like to see on your property in 5 years? More alpacas, a bigger barn, somewhere to put the hay - make a list. This is not a list of to-do items, but things you would like in an ideal world.

What alpaca accessories do you own? Halters, buckets, chute, scale - make a list of this too, with how much you paid for it. These are assets.

How many alpacas do you own? Do not include the upcoming cria in this section. Alpacas are also assets, so put a price on each one.

This information can be in list form or in a nice narrative. Remember, this is your business plan, make it work for you. Only include that information that helps you make decisions. Everything else is noise.

Next time, we'll talk about mission statements.

Note: As I work on the whole, I will be editing all sections. When this is finished, I will put the whole thing together in a PDF for anyone interested.

In the meantime, here is what I have come up with for my Farm Overview section:

Farm Overview

Property

Our current property is just over 5 acres. The alpacas have 3 pastures consisting of about 1.5 acres. We are in the process of fencing another acre to bring the total to 2.5 acres available for the alpacas. Each pasture has a shelter, water and a hay bin. There are interconnecting gates between the pastures which enables us to increase pasture size as needed.

One third of the garage is used to store alpaca items and hay.

Current Operations

I have been raising alpacas for 9 years. Over that span I have sold 12 alpacas, plus 5 consignment alpacas. We have 9 females and 5 males with 2 cria expected this year.

halters
leads
buckets
shelters
hay bins
chute
shearing table
shearing equipment
tooth-a-matic
emergency kit
horse trailer
trailer hitch (mine is special - worthy of its own blog post)
herdease software
camera
photo printer
Green panel pen w/creep gate
heated buckets

Cappuccino Chip
Millennium Jubilee
Cinnamon Kiss
Mary Pitcher (Mollie)
Raven
Rheia
Andante
Andantina
Sweetart
Bond James Bond
Ink Jet
Apollo
Heart's Afire
Baby - unnamed cria by Mollie

Improvements Needed

The current capacity is ~20. Our fields are very productive and we supplement with hay/pellets. The existing facilities (including the new pastures) will keep up with herd growth as long as the projected sales happen.

How to Write an Alpaca Business Plan - Part 1

Given that every business needs a business plan, how do you write one for alpacas? We don't want to manufacture millions of widgets or raise thousands of cattle no matter how well these business models are documented. There are some books and web sites that give you the outline of an alpaca business plan, but I found them lacking. I am a technical writer by trade, so I dived into those dry books on how to write business plans and applied it to my alpaca business.

I took home the message that you need goals. What gets managed, gets tracked. What gets tracked, gets done.

I acknowledged the need for a financial plan, if not actual financials. Not only answering the question of am I making money, but how will I make money.

Detailing where my alpaca business is today and where I want it to be in the future opened my mind to more possibilities. How many acres do I want, how many alpacas, do I want machinery or material goods to help . In an ideal world, what do I see as my end goal? Now how do I get there?! What are the risks?

Business Plans are the roadmap to success. Once you have the goals set for your one year and 5 year plans, it is easy to make day to day decisions. Should I put in the new pasture, or buy a new alpaca is transformed into the question "Does buying this new alpaca fit into my business plan, does putting in a new pasture fit into my business plan?" I have passed up many alpacas because they do not fit into my business plan. I raise black alpacas, with some brown and fawn sprinkled in. Fawn does not always cover black... But I digress. Even though the alpacas were quality and were well priced, I saved my money for the new pasture because my 5 year goal is to have 10 production black females. To do that, I need more room. Fencing is the priority.

Deciding on which breedings to do is easier with a business plan. Which male will drive my business forward towards my goals? If you have the 20/20 goal of 20 pounds of fiber at 20 microns, then you would want to look at the males that will add density and fineness to your females instead of say color.

The business plan is the way to tell the IRS you are serious and not a hobby. It is one of the criteria for a business, along with stationary, and a bank account. :)

A business plan helps you budget your expenses and income.

Given the scarcity of business plans amongst alpaca breeders, I think there must be a reluctance about writing them. They can be a long or short as you want. They can include financials or just a general goal. The can be involved or simple. It really is up to you. I thought it might help for me to walk you through the steps of a business plan with an alpaca slant on the information. Many of the books that are out there are thinking along different lines of manufacturing or production of one item. Farming and ranching have their own unique issues.

Follow along with me for the next couple of weeks as I rewrite my business plan and talk about the steps involved.