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Alpaca Business Plan
By: Mike Safley
An alpaca business plan should answer the following questions and contain the following elements:
- Which alpaca breed do you intend to own, huacaya or suri, or both?
- The identification of your market niche.
- When do you require income from the herd?
- How much income does your family require from the enterprise?
- A breeding plan.
- A farm expense budget.
- Will you pay cash or buy on terms?
- The tax benefits of alpaca ownership.
- A marketing strategy.
All of these concepts are covered in great detail at our How to Buy, Breed, and Succeed in the Alpaca Business seminar. If you can not attend the seminar, call Fred at 503-628-3110 and he will help you develop your own individualized alpaca business plan.
Creating a Farm Plan
Designing a safe, well-organized plan for adding barns, fences, and accessory buildings is crucial to your success in the alpaca business. At Northwest Alpacas we have helped hundreds of people get started right.
We can give you practical advice on selecting the ideal location, the type of fences you will need, the size of gates, which type of pasture to plant, how to build effective shelter, where to place water troughs, how to select hay, layout your barn, protect against predators, and dispose of manure. About the only thing we won't do is scoop the poop. So call or email Fred ([email protected]) today and find out how we can help you get off on the right foot.
Animal Selection
One of the most critical decisions you will make involves selecting your breeding stock. If you learn nothing else from this article or our website, please learn how to select stock before you spend the money you have budgeted for animal acquisition.
New breeders have a unique opportunity to position themselves at the forefront of the industry by selecting animals that have superior traits. Knowledge of these traits and how to select them is often the difference betweens success and failure in the alpaca business. Our seminar and the books we have recommended will go a long way toward helping you make good decisions.
For instance most new purchasers come to our ranch knowing what breed and what color of animal they want to select but few are looking at several, even more important issues:
- What pedigree they would like to have in their purchase
- To whom is the animal they are buying bred
- Who will they be bred to in the future
- To whom the alpacas will their purchase offspring be bred.
The answers to the above questions can be even more important than whether or not the alpacas exhibit good fleece and conformation traits. At Northwest Alpacas, Fred and myself spend a lot of time educating our clients as to what they should look for in their breeding stock. You can call us anytime and start the conversation about what kind of stock will best suit your plans for the alpaca business, or check out our for Alpacas for Sale.
Whatever you do, take a little time to educate yourself before you spend your money. Remember you're going to be in the alpaca business for a long time.
Marketing Strategy
At Northwest Alpacas we believe that marketing is one of the most crucial elements necessary for the success of any alpaca breeder. I can tell you with 100% certainty that if you do not let people know that you have alpacas for sale, you will not sell any.
The first step to understanding how to market alpacas is to learn: 1) who buys alpacas in the first place; 2) how buyers find out about alpacas and where they go to buy them; and 3) what sales strategies work in today's marketplace. For an in-depth discussion of this topic, you can visit our library and read one of the many articles on marketing alpacas.
Back: Getting Started on Alpaca Business
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About The Author
Mike Safley has owned alpacas since 1984. Mike is a past president of the
Alpaca Owners and Breeders Association (AOBA), the Alpaca Registry Inc., and was
founding editor of Alpacas magazine. Mike owns and operates Northwest Alpacas
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