The Rancho Alicja Alpaca Story...

Myself, Alicja, my husband, and our two boys moved to the US from Sweden thirty years ago. I, like many women, chose to be a stay-at-home mom and raise my boys while my husband provided for our family. Once our boys grew up, I didn’t have too much to do and began to feel unneeded.

My husband always tried to comfort me saying he had big plans for us when he retired and this was scary for me. Don’t get me wrong, I love my husband, and after almost forty years together, I don’t want to lose him, so I had to think fast.

I immediately decided that I did not want to travel. I’m what you’d call a travel bug, and besides, we did a lot of travelling when the boys were small. My second option was to stay home and become a grumpy old lady, but that’s not for me either.

In my spare time, I love to embroider and sew. I am hoping to enrich my embroidery work into a full time journey and look forward to meeting and making new friends by selling quilts, home decor and other fashionable items. You can visit my embroidery site at http://www.alicjaembroidery.com but, that's not all...

One day as I watched TV, guess what I saw? You’re right. I saw a program about alpacas. The show said they were very nice animals and easy to care for. Most of all, the program pointed out, alpacas choose one or two places in the pasture to leave their “bean” piles. Not like a horse or goats. Alpacas are very clean animals.

I did bit more research to learn more about alpacas. Shortly after my research was done, we met the cute, furry critters that would change our lives. To make the story short, when my husband finally retired, we sold our house in the city and moved to the country side of El Cajon (San Diego city) to start our adventure.

On the ranch I found peace, calmness, and happiness.

On our wooded acreage we take care of our herd of black Huacaya alpacas. Why black? I prefer black alpacas because to me they appear more exotic.

We began with just two female alpacas. We bred them and the next year had four. Then we bred them again and again. Now we have seven alpacas.

When selecting a herdsire for breeding or a female for purchase, we select for excellent breeding records and bloodlines which will help us with our goal of creating stock with the best potential for quality and longevity.

We have had some misfortunate on our ranch, a few mistakes I made because of lack of knowledge (I had never raised livestock before). But, I learned from them. To continue learning, I go to a variety of alpaca seminars and shows and I keep in contact with a number of alpaca breeders with whom I can share information.

Today, I am proud to be an alpaca breeder. I have so much fun with them. I have learned respect and friendship from these beautiful animals. I have come to know each one of them - their personality and behavior. We’d truly enjoy a chance to introduce you to alpacas. Only one telephone call and you can see for yourself how easy it is to fall in love with alpacas.

Thank you for taking the time to read our alpaca story,
 

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