Re: [AlpacaTalk] Girls or boys?
I agree wholeheartedly. Lots of boys need good homes. LOTS of boys. They
will probably be 1/4 the cost of even a non-breeding female, and you can
probably even work out a barter. If you want to process fiber, I know I
happily trade fiber boys for spun yarn--I'm sure I'm not the only one out
there open to that.
Pam in CO
On Mon, Jan 26, 2009 at 1:49 PM, Heather Zeleny <
alpacatalk@westwind
> I absolutely recommend getting a few fiber boys if you don't plan to
> show and don't want to breed, at least for now. They don't have to be
> gelded. I have heard of plenty of difficult to handle geldings so for
> alpacas it doesn't really make them more manageable. Fiber males can
> frequently be found for $250-1000. I personally would never pay more
> than $500 for a fiber male. Sometimes, people even give them away! We
> actually donated some fiber boys to some 4H people last year, and
> some of them had really nice, very fine fleece but weren't breeder
> quality.
>
> Girls will be more expensive. There are very few non-breeder girls
> out there, and they're usually priced much higher than fiber boys.
> And, they must be kept separate from males because even geldings will
> "breed." Very few non-breeder females have been spayed, so if she's a
> non-breeder due to issues that make pregnancy life-threatening or
> that she always loses them pre-term, she absolutely should not be
> kept with males, intact or not. And, as we've discussed before, a
> gelding will over breed her and cause sever uterine damage and
> infection is likely.
>
> I think starting with the fiber boys is a great way to get
> comfortable with them. If you later choose to have breeding females,
> you may be able to change fencelines to accommodate both, or you may
> just find new homes for your fiber boys.
>
> Heather
>
>
> On Jan 26, 2009, at 12:34 PM, Caryn Law wrote:
>
> > Hello everyone!
> >
> > When I (hopefully) buy my first alpacas this year (probably two to
> > start
> > with), I'm wondering...
> >
> > I don't plan to show alpacas. I'm interested in owning them purely
> > for the
> > fiber as I'm a handspinner who would like to use their fiber for
> > handspun
> > products. We aren't interested in getting into the breeding aspect of
> > alpacas right away as we don't want to overextend ourselves and
> > want to get
> > experienced with just owning them before breeding. But I know that
> > if I want
> > to expand my herd, I'll either have to buy from someone else or have a
> > breeding female. On the one hand, I like the idea of having a
> > breedable
> > female eventually (so I would want to start by owning females) for
> > this
> > purpose, but on the other hand breeding females are very, very
> > pricey, and
> > I'm wondering as a fiber-only owner if I'll want to just stick with
> > buying
> > my alpacas from someone else, in which case I suppose I could go
> > with either
> > boys or girls.
> >
> > Any advice? As far as owning both, I'm not sure I want to do that
> > -- our
> > pasture is one large plot with two small divisions in it that total
> > three
> > paddocks, but the paddocks aren't separated enough, I believe, to
> > allow for
> > proper seperation of the sexes.
> >
> > Looking forward to hearing from the experts!
> >
> > Also, is there a particular time of year that's best for buying your
> > alpacas?
> >
> > - Caryn Law
> > Issaquah, WA
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
>
>
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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posted by Chaddo at 1:03 PM
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