An Alpaca is a fleece and meat animal that is renowned for its gentleness, excellent fleeces, and easy care.
They made their world-wide debut, moving to Canada from their original home in Chile in the late 1980’s, and a large group arrived on January 2nd, 1992.
Since then, their numbers have swollen to 25,000 registered Alpacas across the country, with many more unregistered.
Alpacas live in herds like sheep, and have a similar herding instinct, so keeping one as a pet is hard on them — they want and need their herd-mates around them to be healthy — at least one other pasture buddy is critical for them.
Alpacas are perfect for farm diversification because:
- Alpacas do not need specialized housing or handling facilities.
- Alpacas are gentle and easy for a single operator to handle.
- Alpacas provide a soft, fine luxury fibre that is in demand for high fashion textiles.
- Registered Canadian purebred alpacas are DNA parent verified for accurate and reliable pedigree information.
Some information on this page was provided with permission by Fibre Works Farm – Linda Windleboe
updated: May 18, 2022