It's Not All Beef: Alpaca Ranching

A couple of months ago, I got a nice e-mail from Sands Bellizzi, who, with her husband, owns an alpaca ranch called The Alpaca Mining Company. As if the name of the ranch wasn't intriguing enough, I'd been wanting to do a little Web surfing to find online resources for "alternative" livestock.

Sands was nice enough to answer a few questions about the alpaca business.

The Bellizzis have been in the alpaca ranching business for only about two years and have been able to make a sustainable profit out of brokering animals for other alpaca ranchers and breeding their own animals. They moved to Grass Valley, Calif., in August 1998 and started off their operation with two pregnant females. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Sands said that investigating the alpaca ranching industry is extremely important for anyone considering entering the business. Finding out what resources are available and learning about alpaca fleece and pedigrees are vital to making good business decisions, and that knowledge will continue to be important as the alpaca ranching industry in the U.S. continues to grow.

The full text of my e-mail interview with Sands is available at http://www.suite101.com/topic_page.cfm/6...

In the meantime, I encourage you to check out the Bellizzis' Web site at http://www.alpacamine.com. You'll get to learn a little bit about the Bellizzi's operation, check out some alpacas for sale and browse a list of useful links.

Unfortunately (for me, anyway) a two-week illness followed by one week of bad weather that left me with dodgy Internet access has yielded only a few alpaca-related Web sites which you'll find in a new category on this page, "Alpacas."

From what I've seen online, people who own alpacas really love them, and not just for the money that can be earned from breeding and shearing them.

Until next month. And happy Thanksgiving for those of you who celebrate it.

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