Our First Alpaca on the Property

Sweet Melissa 

 Sarah handfeeding grain to Sweet Melissa

      We owned the property on Pheasant Lane for 6 months, then rented the house out, but kept the land to fence and raise our alpacas.  We only lived about two miles from the ranchette (only 5 acres), so it was easy to go back and forth a couple times a day.  I found myself spending most of my time with the alpacas, anyway.  I didn't have much I had to do, so I just watched them do their alpaca thing.  Great fun.
     Melissa (well most alpacas) loves grain.  It's a great way to get them to come to you or to train them.  All we have to do is shake the grain pale and they are immediately running toward us.

   Sweet Melissa was born in Canada and had a dual registration, Canadian and American.  She was actually our second package deal, purchasing alpacas.  The first three we bought were still at the previous owners till our ranch was ready,  
  There had been a ban on livestock going into or coming out of Canada for a few years, due to an outbreak of mad cow disease.  Once the ban was lifted, we noticed Mike Safley going up to Canada to buy a million dollars worth of animals.   We figured if they were good enough for Mike, we could probably find some, too.
    Robert started looking for deals in Canada.  He found Melissa with a male offspring, Intrepid Allyst at her side.  She was at a ranch called KJ Alpacas, owned by James and Karen Jarvis.  They were wonderful people for our first Canadian deal.  We lucked out that our first foreign country buy went so smoothly (some didn't).
     None of our animals had the greatest fiber when we started out, but we knew from the numerous seminars we had attended that it only takes about 4 generations to have a beautiful animal with sensational fleece.