According to the article in the paper today on our regional alpaca-raising organization (and the ad that’s been running for months on TV), this is a wonderful, no-downside approach to having a warm fuzzy business, bringing your family closer together, never running out of wool etc.
The newspaper article stressed how much alpaca fur/wool goes for on the market as opposed to ordinary sheep wool, and how adorable the furry little (well, not so little) critters are. Oddly, all the identified alpaca promoters seem to be breeders, not farmers. They’ll happily sell you animals, at prices up to $15K or more for a pregnant female. But I haven’t heard similar hype coming from anyone raising the beasts for wool.
Not that I am considering this as an alternate career (for one thing, our neighborhood is not zoned for alpacas), but I was curious if there are Dopers who’ve achieved success in the alpaca wool-farming business, not to mention if they’ve any sweaters for sale cheap. Or is this a speculative bubble like the failed schemes to raise ostriches for meat?
Here’s some interesting information from the Great Lakes Alpaca Association.
The U.S. alpaca fiber market is still being developed. Currently, it’s a combination of some cottage industry and some commercial processing. Even just 5 years ago, most alpaca fiber was processed or sold directly by the breeder themselves. While this can be a lucrative way to handle each year’s clip, it’s time consuming and ultimately the market is limited by the number of handspinners or craftspeople in an area. As the alpaca industry grew in the United States it became clear that supply would outstrip demand.
You can get the full story here.
http://www.glaa-alpaca.org/resources/fiber-market.html
I have a friend who got a bunch of alpacas. The money you make from the wool pretty much just about covers the cost of upkeep…barns, winter hay, etc. You cannot make money from selling alpaca fiber, even if you got the animals for free.
The way to make money is to breed alpacas and sell them to other people. But of course, the only way for the alpaca buyer to make money is for them to breed alpacas and sell them too.
I’m sure that there will be a good market for alpaca fiber in the future. But buying alpacas to breed, then selling them to other people to breed, who sell them to other people to breed, who sell them to other people to breed, is obviously a speculative bubble.
If the demand for alpaca fiber outstrips supply, then there is room for breeders to make money selling the animals. But once the market is saturated and there is no reason to buy animals, then the price for breeding females will collapse. I’m not an expert in the alpaca fiber market, so I can’t tell you if the market could support 100 times more fiber production or if the market is already at saturation.
That said, even if the market is saturated there will be some people who could make a living as breeders. I’m sure there are cattle breeders, horse breeders, pig breeders, sheep breeders, etc who make money breeding and selling animals even though the market for the species is saturated. But these aren’t people with a few animals in their back yard.
Either you (Jackmannii) live in the same area I live, or there’s PR push going on in the alpaca industry. Our paper also had an article today.
Sounds to me like the same thing people have been doing with ostriches and other exotic animals for years, talking about all the wonderful stuff you can make from them, but the only ones who make money are breeders. Problem is, since breeding is the only way to make money from them, everyone becomes a breeder.
Eventually, everyone who wants the animals has them, and Ted Turner has to start his own chain of restaraunts to sell his buffalo meat he’s raising.
I don’t know a thing about alpacas, but I do have a few thoughts to share based on my knowledge of human nature:
(1) Easy money is hard to come by. Because there are lots of people trying to make money. It’s like the old joke where 2 economists are walking down the street and one says “Hey, I see a twenty dollar bill lying in the gutter.” The reply: “No, it can’t be there because somebody would have picked it up.”
(2) You’re not gonna read about easy ways of making money in the newspaper. Because people keep that sort of thing to themselves. When word gets out, it’s no longer easy money.