How to Success­fully Run a Prof­itable Alpaca Farm?

Elis­a­beth Freitag’s morning kicks off with checking the 300 alpacas at Aabach Farm. Around 120 machos (males) and 180 hembras (females) and their crias (babies) live on 15ha of land near Ladbergen in North Rhine-West­phalia, Germany. First, she gets an overview of the tasks to be completed and helps with the animals’ medical care. Then it’s off to the desk to work on the digital tasks: Oper­a­tional plan­ning and taking care of the website and social media chan­nels, for example. Elis­a­beth has more than 33,000 followers on Insta­gram and more than 20,000 on Tiktok.

She keeps them up to date with insights into everyday life on the farm, infor­ma­tion about alpacas and events. Events now account for a large part of Aabach Farm: “These days, events like alpaca hikes, taster sessions, kids’ birthday parties and yoga with alpacas account for 50-60% of our income. We make our living from wool prod­ucts, breeding and selling animals,” she explains frankly. “We’ve run various events with alpacas since 2018 and are now liter­ally swamped. Even so, we have a diverse set-up – because our journey with alpacas started much earlier.”

Since 2018, Aabach Farm has been offering alpaca walks. But only with the alpacas that enjoy it.

A yoga session on the meadow among the alpacas.

Alpacas instead of Galloways

The Freitag family had been breeding Quarter horses and Amer­ican Paint horses for over 25 years and in 2002 were looking for rumi­nants to take turns with the horses on their leased pastures. They came up with the idea of getting Galloway cattle. That was until they stum­bled across alpacas at an event, which were still some­what unknown at the time. “We fell in love with these animals right away,” smiles Elis­a­beth. “The dealer also made big promises about the fibre quality and claimed we would get high prices for the wool. The fact that, unlike Galloways, alpacas don’t have to be slaugh­tered was also a good argu­ment for us as a family.” So, with that the Freitags bought their first five alpacas. In addi­tion to meadow manage­ment, the animals were to be bred for their fine fibres and the produc­tion of high-quality yarns and fabrics as another pillar of the busi­ness.

Finan­cial plan­ning as a farmer

Aabach Farm was one of the first alpaca farms in Germany – meaning the oppor­tu­ni­ties to reach out to other farmers and breeders to exchange ideas and prob­lems related to keeping the animals were limited. The fibre quality of the purchased alpacas also posed prob­lems, since it turned out only one of the expen­sively purchased alpacas had really good fibres. “We had to go through some painful expe­ri­ences before we were able to make alpaca breeding finan­cially viable,” says Elis­a­beth. “As a farmer, I recog­nise that an animal’s value is ulti­mately based on how much it brings in. The farm simply cannot afford to have animals with worth­less fibres or that are unsuit­able for events in the long term.”

As one of the first steps on the road to successful breeding, the Freitags concen­trated more on the Huya­caya breed instead of focusing on Suri alpacas as they had been doing before. Suris often have better fibres, but these have to be painstak­ingly processed by hand after shearing, which is too cost-inten­sive in Germany. From 2004 onwards, Aabach Farm has been purchasing and importing machos – some of them award-winning – with the aim of opti­mising the alpacas for the criteria required for yarn produc­tion: Their fibres should have a good crimp and be very fine with a beau­tiful sheen and good strength.

The fibre quality of alpacas

Alpaca fibres are silky smooth, finely crimped and temper­a­ture-regu­lating; they are between 10 and 25cm long. In contrast to sheep’s wool, they contain hardly any lanolin so are often described as hypoal­ler­genic. The deci­sive factor for being able to be processed into yarn and wool is the crimp, also known as the curva­ture. This is indi­cated as the average curva­ture in ° per millimetre. For further processing into high-quality fabrics, the curva­ture should be at least 60 °/mm – a value that Aabach Farm managed to achieve as far back as 2008. By 2015, an alpaca reached 94 °/mm, and the curva­ture has now been over 108 °/mm for several years. The fibre quality is checked once a year by a certi­fied labo­ra­tory with a sample taken during shearing.

If you want to breed alpacas for their fibres, then you have to be prepared for a few things. In prin­ciple, the fibre quality can decrease over the animals’ life­time. That’s why the Freitags have specialised in alpacas with partic­u­larly long-lasting fibre quality. It’s possible to tell how much the quality will decrease from the age of about eight. This is why the machos at Aabach Farm are not used for breeding until they are six years old at the earliest. With a life expectancy of over 20 years, this guar­an­tees sustain­able breeding that is still prof­itable even when the animals reach old age.

For new breeders, this means purchasing enough animals with favourable values from the outset and taking a close look at the fibre values of the parent animals. The alpaca popu­la­tion is natu­rally slow to repro­duce, as the gesta­tion period of hembras is 11.5 months and birth prob­lems can occur often – this means that on average a hembra will have a maximum of 10 crias over her lifespan. Animal nutri­tion is a deci­sive factor when it comes to breeding, as it not only affects the repro­duc­tion rate, but also the fibre quality of the offspring: Minerals, trace elements and vita­mins ensure tensile strength, sheen, curva­ture and thick­ness.

Shearing and fibre processing

Alpacas are outside all year round and it’s not neces­sary or even a good idea to keep them indoors in winter – the animals stay warm enough under their fleece. But when spring comes round, before it gets too hot, it’s time for the annual shearing. This is neces­sary to stop the animals from over­heating. It’s impor­tant here to shear close to the skin to keep the fibres as long as possible – fibres that are too short or get torn make processing more diffi­cult. About 0.3 to 0.5cm of fibre is kept on the alpacas to stop them getting sunburned.

Since the fibres are extremely thin and light, using weight units to adver­tise alpaca fibre doesn’t make much sense, but: “It’s possible to shear between one and four kilo­grams of the best quality per year,” explains Elis­a­beth, who shears the animals herself. Imme­di­ately after shearing, the fibres are sorted into different sacks according to length and quality – some­thing that requires an expe­ri­enced eye.

Processing alpaca fibres is a genuine craft that is hard to come by these days. “The art of wool processing is dying out, more and more busi­nesses are closing because it’s hardly worth­while. Washing, spin­ning yarns and weaving by hand is very labour-inten­sive. That’s why we can’t keep up with the massive and low-cost alpaca industry that exists in Peru,” says Elis­a­beth. However, in order to produce yarn more cheaply in Germany, many take the easy road when it comes to processing: The fibres are first cleaned in a shred­ding machine and then chem­i­cally cleaned of mites, hay residues, bacteria and similar cont­a­m­i­nants. Then other chem­i­cals, such as moth repel­lents, are added.

“Some of the substances used are neuro­toxins – and then these go on to be used in duvets,” explains Elis­a­beth. “This treat­ment process destroys the fibres along with their wonderful prop­er­ties and often leads to customers buying new cheap prod­ucts after a few years. With this in mind, we delib­er­ately decided to go for a high-quality finish and step into the luxury market. Our alpaca prod­ucts are only avail­able from specialist retailers after a consul­ta­tion.”

Animal welfare always in focus

Whether it’s alpaca hikes, alpaca taster sessions or yoga with alpacas – animal welfare should always be the top priority at these events, says Elis­a­beth. “Some alpacas can be very stand-offish, don’t like human contact or don’t like being walked on a lead. Farms should be aware of this and respect it. That’s the crux of the matter with alpacas: It’s not very often they’re finan­cially suit­able for both events and fibre processing,” she adds. This makes it all the more impor­tant to diver­sify and not just rely on one pillar of alpaca farming. Open­ness and trans­parency towards customers and consumers is also impor­tant: “Commu­ni­ca­tion plays a major role for us. That’s why we’ve been a member of animal welfare organ­i­sa­tions for years and also educate inter­ested farmers about the bene­fits and chal­lenges, for example.”

Elis­a­beth has two dreams for alpaca breeding and her farm: “A legal frame­work for greater animal welfare, which is still non-exis­tent because the alpaca is not recog­nised as a farm animal. And I’d love to get out of the lease and onto our own farm with even more space, a farm café and our own farm shop to sell the prod­ucts, to give us an even bigger plat­form!”