For the past 5 years, we have been venturing down this road firmly believing that raising alpacas for profit is indeed very possible. We still believe this to be true, if we work hard enough, and this year we are going to do our best to not lose money. That’s right folks, in 2020 we are going to do everything in our power to break even!
Just to be clear, it’s not like we have been throwing our money in a trash can. We just haven’t been keeping track and working to keep our expenses low and profits high. We knew that we wouldn’t have to spend money to get us in the best position for success. This year we are going start paying attention and do what we can do to accomplish our goal.
While we understand that this doesn’t sound like a very impressive goal for the year, there are a few things that should be considered. First, we are already a fully operational breeding alpaca farm with full alpaca farm costs. We currently have seventeen alpacas on the farm and one that spends half of the year here. On top of that, we are excepting up to eight cria (baby alpacas) this summer, to get us to a total of twenty-six alpacas.
Those eighteen alpacas all need to be fed, hydrated, yearly shearing, and appropriate health care. On the plus side, they do produce eighteen alpacas worth of wool. The entire concept of raising alpacas for profit is based off the idea that processing that wool and selling it will make more money than it costs to care for them each year. We believe that this is true in the market today, if you are willing to put in the effort.
In order to break our mission into logical pieces, we split them into “offense” and “defense”. Offense are tasks that we need to complete to boost our income. Defensive tasks are meant to save money. We plan on tackling this mission a few pieces at a time, and we hope you will come along for the ride. We look forward to hearing your recommendations based on what you have tried before and maybe you will have a few new insights for your farm or business along the way
Here are a few of the ideas that we will be covering throughout the year!
Offense – Making Money
Making the most of our fiber
Until recently, we haven’t been doing as well as we could in this category. Now that we have everything we need to wash, card, and spin the wool into yarn, we plan to take full advantage of that. We will soon have a full stock of handspun yarn and roving for purchase.
Weaving new products
We just purchased a brand new 32” Rigid Heddle Loom! We are excited to create new product and bring them to our markets.
Finding more large markets
We are looking to find more large scale markets in the area without established alpaca vendors. We want to get in front of more customers without stepping on any other farms’ toes. Specifically, we are looking for large fall and winter markets. (If you know of any in our area, let us know!!!)
Open Houses
Most alpaca farms do regular open houses and do very well. We have been hesitant to do so because of parking, until recently. We plan to do a few more of these throughout the winter and into the spring. Keep an eye out for those dates!
Selling animals
We have had no problem moving pet quality males, so we know the market is there. However, we haven’t sold many breeding quality females. It is important to note that we haven’t actively tried to sell any either though. That will change this year as we look to move a few animals in order to make room for more.
Dying yarn
Another thing that we are very excited about is the opportunity to hand spin and hand dye wool. We are looking to purchase a sizeable amount of light fiber from a local farm so that we can try our hand at dying it. We have many people ask us for colorful yarn and have had good luck selling it in the past when we’ve gotten it wholesale.
Selling poop
We have sold poop at the street every year in the spring, but we can never keep up with demand…Who knew alpacas don’t “go” on demand!? If we can find a way to start bagging it earlier in the year, we could have much more ready to go when people start planting their gardens.
Keeping more inventory
Until now, we really haven’t been tracking how much of each product we were selling and when. We would basically look at what we don’t have when setting up at a market and we would order it the next time we remember. This caused us to miss out on numerous sales and opportunities. If we keep more of a stock and order before we run out of anything, we could potentially sell much more product in 2020.
Defense – Saving Money
Saving Money on Hay
We are still buying hay in small batches of 20-30 bales every other week. Buying hay in large quantities would bring our hay prices down significantly, but we will need to find somewhere to store it all. We have a few options in mind here but we are all ears if you have some creative ideas you would like to share. Throw them in the comments section below.
Another big thing that we need to look at in 2020 is conserving the hay that we do buy. We have been looking at several ways that we can stop wasting as much hay.
Finding more creative ways to use our fiber
We have found many ways to use all of our fiber, but there is always more to learn. This year we used our thirds to mulch the garden and it worked out very well. We plan to find other ways like this to cut down costs around the house.
Save on shipping
Recently we have been doing markets, fairs and other events almost every weekend. In order to have the product we needed, we were restocking at the beginning of each week. That means we were paying shipping to multiple suppliers every week. Placing larger orders less frequently would significantly cut down on our costs.
Conclusion
We hope that you follow us along our journey, and let us know if you have any suggestions on how we can accomplish our goals. Follow along by subscribing below or following us on social media!
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