The Alpacas | Fiddlehead Farm

Breanna has always wanted alpacas. She is an avid crocheter and a proficient spinner of fiber into yarn. In the summer of 2017 we saw a facebook post about someone needing to sell an alpaca herd, they were on an estate and the alpacas could no longer be used as a tax deduction so they were selling them. They had alpacas with papers and without and the ones without papers were in our price range. We drove a little over an hour away and we were talking to the caretaker while we walked to the alpaca field. She seemed to like us and started talking about two special alpacas, Peaches and Cream, both orphans who bonded with eachother, one of whom was deaf. She told us about how when they were young, the hearing one would help the deaf one and how they couldnt be split up. She was planning on taking them to her personal farm, but she also thought they might be a good fit for our farm. I glanced over at my wife, saw she was choked up and I knew we were about to buy a deaf alpaca.

We ended up buying three, the pair of white orphans and another brown alpaca named Stella. We asked the caretaker if she knew of anyone who could transport them for us. She did and said she would call us the next day. When she called, the price seemed fair and she mentioned that they would be brought in a minivan. I said “what?” She explained that you can fit four alpacas in an average minivan and it is a great way to transport them. After a little further discussion we decided that since we already had a minivan, Breanna would head down the next day and bring them back.

It was an uneventful ride and soon the Alpacas were getting used to their new home. They are very easy to care for and basically eat hay. They arent very smart, but this makes them easier to care for. They eat a whole lot of fresh green stuff in the summer, endless wheelbarrows full in fact. No matter how many piles of edible goodness that they have in their pen, when they see someone coming towards them with another barrow full, they stop eating, come to the door, and jockey for position to be the first alpaca to get their teeth into a new load of the exact same stuff that is knee deep in their pen.