Why Own Alpacas?

Alpacas offer something to everyone. You can decide to invest in alpacas from a purely financial perspective and board your alpacas at a full-service farm. If you own a little bit of land, and love animals, the alpaca will also offer you a wonerful lifestyle. If you are a fiber artist, you may choose to just buy a few gelded pet males in various colors.

The alpaca industry is in its infancy in the USA, eventually to be evolved into a textile industry. The first alpacas were imported from South America in 1984. In the later half of 1990s importation to the USA was closed to protect our market. There are about 130,000 registered alpacas in the USA.

Alpaca prices have remained stable and high since the beginning, due to limited supply and slow reproduction (one offspring per year per female). The market is expected to be a "breeders" market and stay stable for many years to come.

Females are priced between $10,000 and $40,000. Young, promising males are priced at between $7,000 and $25,000. Proven males that produce high-quality off-spring can sell for $100,000 or more. Alpacas offer high return on investment and significant tax advantages. You can protect your investment by fully insuring your alpacas for about 3.25% of value, paid anually.

Alpacas can be boarded (agisted) for about $2 to $3 a day at an established farm.

To learn more about the financial aspects of owning alpacas, contact our national organization, AOBA, (go to the Useful Links page) and ask for the "Alpacas - Financial Aspects of Alpaca Ownership" pamphlet.

Alpacas are truly "beautiful in all respects". They are endearing, gentle and intelligent animals that are a joy to live with and care for.

If you are interested in animal behavior, alpacas offer a wonderful opportunity for study and interaction. They are highly social animals that interact with each other using subtle body language, occational spitting, and a soft humming sound. As they are very intelligent, you can, with patience and care, train them to listen to commands, and to do just about anything. The most popular approaches to animal handling and training are TTEAM (see our Useful Links page) and Clicker Training.

If you are interested in genetics, you will enjoy setting up a breeding program to improve the quality of your herd, one generation at a time. You can set goals for your program, select herd-sires for your females and evaluate the resulting off-spring. There are a lot of exciting research being done on genetics and health issues of camelids today.

If you are interested in fiber arts, you will undoubtely spend many happy hours working with the beautiful alpaca fiber. You can learn how to spin, weave and knit wonderful end products that can be sold for profit. You can also spend many hours researching the interesting history of textiles, and the history of the Incas who played such an important role for the alpaca.

You can participate in national, regional and local Alpaca Shows to compete with other breeders for ribbons and prices. You can compete in halter classes (alpaca is judged), showmanship classes (the handler is judged) and obstacle course classes (the interaction between alpaca and handler to accomplish the common goal is judged). You can enter your fiber in the fleece show. Shows are not only for breeding-quality alpacas, even pet-quality alpacas can be entered in obstacle classes and fiber shows, as long as they are registered in the national registry (the ARI). Shows are a good way to gain recognition for your farm and your alpacas.