We moved to Colorado from North Jersey in 2000 and were nothing more than City Slickers, having worked in the "Big Apple" most of our lives. One night an advertisement came on TV about these cute looking critters and, of course, we had never seen one or knew what they were. But they were very intriguing, and Bob was looking for something to do in retirement that could subsidize his Social Security income. We visited a few farms and went to a Denver show. A few years passed by real fast and at the end of 2003 the urge came back to look into the alpaca business. That year, we purchased Miss Linda and she had a handsome male in the summer of 2004, which we named Ellington. We planned to keep only 15-20 alpacas at any given time, but have since built a full time business. We will soon be approaching 30 alpacas and one llama, and Bob has kept his executive position in corporate life to help sustain this hobby during the economic downturn.

So while Bob transforms from a City Slicker to an Urban Cowboy and eventual retirement from corporate America, we have been studying about these loveable critters and adding the knowledge we got from the wonderful people that cared for our alpacas. With the comfort level we received from these people we have transitioned into a full time alpaca lifestyle on our beautiful Texas Hill Country ranch that is only six years old and has a 4,320 square foot barn with wonderful pastures for our lovely alpacas.

We believe our most important business practice is the care and treatment we extend to our animals; that we keep their pens cleaned on a daily basis, give them vitamins and minerals every day no matter what time of the year it is, we close the females and crias in the barn nightly to protect them from predators, during the hot Texas climate we have been able to keep our barn between 78-85 degrees with many fans and a giant Port-O-Cool system and we have an automatic bug mist system in the entire 120 feet of barn that leaves our animals very comfortable from the annoyance of flies and other insects. Our position has been and will always be that these wonderful creatures are not pets, they are livestock and we "handle" them as such. But, as stated earlier we "tend" to them as if they are our beloved pets; they are cute and for the most part gentle, but if you "handle" them as pets they are going to be pushy when they are adult alpacas.

Since we believe that in order for our alpacas to receive the care and treatment that they are accustom to; we need to extend our working knowledge and practices to anyone that has a desire to enter this wonderful business. Building a strong relationship and continually offering a helping hand to anyone interested in purchasing our beloved alpacas is a very important part of our desire to getting people educated in this business. We are always here for guidance and a hands-on experience in the hope of finding a good fit for our animals and to properly promote this wonderful life style.