Watch the Interview
Learn about Alpacas and the farm and see prime alpaca footage.
The Interview Transcribed
"IL" - Isaac Leslie
"SH" - Sandy Harder
"JH" - Johan Harder
IL- “I’d like to start, would you guys introduce yourselves please.”
SH- “Okay, I’m Sandy Harder. This is my husband.”
JH- “I’m Johan Harder.”
IL- “And I understand you’re in the Alpaca business. Can you tell me a little bit about how you got into it?”
SH- “Well actually I saw a commercial on the Animal Planet in early October 2001 and I switched over to the Animal Planet from the news and there was the face of an alpaca and I realized that I owned alpaca products and I never had a face to put to the end product. My husband and I had wanted to leave suburbia for a long time. My husband worked in the south Bronx for 18 years as an office manager for a land lord who managed apartment buildings and I worked for the city of New York for about 11years and both of us had really just wanted a lifestyle change and we knew we had wanted to come up into the country somewhere and be around mountains and I see this commercial and I think ‘Oh my goodness, here’s a start.’ And we immediately started investigating the Alpaca business and industry by visiting farms and going to shows and going to seminars and learning everything we could and to figure out if this was really something viable and if we could do this and a matter of taking care of the animals was the utmost priority and we realized that we could take care of them, they’re low maintenance so we looked at an alpaca and in less than a year from seeing this commercial we took a wrong turn on Route 67 and we see ‘Welcome to Vermont’ and this house was for sale and it is the first house you see when you come from the southwestern corner of New York. We fell in love with the house and the property and we were up here September 18th which was less than a year after seeing that commercial. We bought three foundation females, two of them were pregnant and the third one was still a maiden who was too young to be bred and we had our first baby in June of 2003 and started really very quickly and it was like a snowball going downhill but we love it up here. It was a lifestyle change that we really wanted and um…it’s perfect.”
IL- “This is great. I can’t even tell you how much easier it is when you just keep talking.”
SH- “Sometimes I take Harrington Road and I’m coming down Harrington Road and I wonder to myself, ‘Why would anyone want to live in the city.’ It’s so beautiful up here, it really is. And the people, I can’t emphasize it enough, the people are so nice up here. There are some nice people in New York but it’s not like here. This is home, it just felt like home right away. And I understand that you have to be, that to be a Vermonter you have to live here for like three years.”
IL- “So um, could you tell me a little about differences between living in Vermont in particular compared to the other states you lived it as far as the policies, towards people, as far as living it, taxation, things like that?
SH- “Well, depending where you are in New York, taxes are different all over, Queens was very low taxes. Here taxes are higher where we are now in Bennington then they were in Queens. People wise up here is blessed, I wouldn’t live anywhere else. People are friendly; they’re considerate, and courteous. We have gone back to the great neck in Queens to visit my family and there’s a level of hostility that is undesirable. Once you live up here you don’t wanna go back down there.
IL- “Do you think Vermont is harder for farmers. Like, do you think that in Vermont in particular it’s easier to start a farm as opposed to other states?
SH- “I wouldn’t know about other stated ‘cause I didn’t try in other states.
IL- “But in your experience was it or have they given you any um, I don’t want to say help in starting your farm, of course not. But was it any easier or available to you with the land?”
SH- “We saw this house and it was for sale so we said, “You know, make an offer.” So we didn’t have any difficulties. It was uh, again, just a matter of taking a wrong turn and it was meant to be but we didn’t really look throughout Vermont. It just happened really by accident. We knew we were going to get into the Alpaca industry we just didn’t know when and we didn’t know where. We really wanted to be in the mountains. We knew we wanted to be in a cold region because you can raise alpacas anywhere. There are Alpacas living in Florida, Louisiana, and Arizona but we knew we wanted to be in colder weather and in the Mountains. So again, its not like we searched and were on a hunt throughout Vermont, it just so happened that we took that wrong turn and here was this barn that is a renovated barn and I guess that 3000 square feet originally held their horses and they eventually renovated it about 21 or 22 years ago and made it their home so not only do the New Yorkers have an Alpaca farm, they are also living in a renovated farm, which is different definitely.
IL- “Now do you know anything about the land before you used it for alpacas, was it a farm beforehand?”
SH- “They did have horses. They did have horses. We had to redo all of the fencing because it was not alpaca friendly and so. And the most important thing in raising Alpacas is having fencing that will protect the Alpacas. They do not travel beyond the fencing, its more just to keep the predators out. And I understand that there are coyotes on this side of the mountain. We’ve not had any attacks luckily, knock on wood but we do know they’re out there. Some summers are worse than others, this summer wasn’t so bad, the summer before we heard them every night. And generally the predators would go after the criers, the baby. A lot of farms will have a Llama to protect the herd or they’ll have be Anatolian or Great Perianese dogs to protect the herd. We just have Charlie the Llama and the fencing.
IL-“ And how does the Llama protect the herd?”
SH- “Well he’s 450 pounds as opposed to 100 or 200 pounds of alpaca so in size alone he’s intimidating. Even the alpacas as well as the guard llama will spit at the predator and stomp it. Even a bunny, a tiny bunny, enters the herd or pasture and a pregnant female or a female that has a new born crier will actually chase the bunny out of the pasture or maybe even stomp it. They will look at that animal no matter how small it is as a predator. They are very protective animals, they are capable of protecting themselves and of course there’s safety in numbers but it’s always nice to have a 450-pound llama on hand. They do have an alarm call. They will, if they see anything outside of their fenced in area, even if it’s a cat, then you will hear a high-pitched screaming call, which alarms the entire herd. And they will act accordingly.
IL- “So you do have pregnant females?”
SH- “Yes”
IL- “So you do breed them yourselves?”
SH- “Yes, we breed them and the females are breed, well gestation is 11 to 11 ˝ months. They generally have one baby at a time. We choose our herd sires very carefully to produce the best possible crier. We want criers that will have the crimp, the waviness, the density to the fleece, the luster, the shine, the males have to be 2-2 ˝ years old before they are allowed to breed and the females are anywhere from 15 to 18 months before they start to breed. So the girls mature faster and again it’s a long time waiting for that one baby but it’s worth it. It’s worth it. Generally they do not need human interference with birthing. We have still, and we just had our 5th baby and we are expecting our 6th, and we have not seen a birth yet. They do it when we are not around, when we are not looking. Our third baby, no…our second baby was born behind my husbands back, literally. It was the easiest birth possible. She just had him and he was standing in no time and pronking in no time. They are very hearty animals, they make excellent mothers but we just haven’t seen one born yet. So its still uh, something to look forward to. Normally there are no complications, there are some though. We did lose one baby that had the umbilical cord around its neck. It happens its part of living on the farm. There are wonderful things that always happen but there are always those natural tragedies. So it’s all part of it but for the most part we’ve had healthy babies.
IL- “Now you’re very specific in how you breed alpacas, but I assume that’s for the product?”
SH- “It is fun but its all about the end product which is from a shawl to socks to coats to jackets to suits to skirts to sweaters to throws to blankets, anything you can make from a natural fiber you can make from alpaca, anything that you make from wool you can make from alpaca fleece. Alpaca is one of the softest, most luxurious fibers in the world. There’s no lanoline so its clean there’s less vegetation in the fiber so its easier to process which makes the end product a lot cheaper than lets say cashmere and um, again its all about the end product. The better the fiber is, the better it is to begin with and the better the end product will be.
IL- “So is there much of a demand for alpaca, the product of them?”
SH- “ It is a growing industry in North America as far as Breeding. We currently, at this point, have probably over 60,000 alpacas throughout North America. They were mostly imported from Peru. We imported them between 1984 and 1998 then the doors closed. For supply and demand we have enough studs here to grow from and genetic lines to breed from. It also makes the animals more valuable but alpaca products have been around for a very long time. Jack Nicholas, this golfer, had Alpaca used for a golfing sweater and it is a famous sweater using the lynx knit. That’s been around since the 50s. Alpaca has been used, its been worn by royalty and it will last, if you take care of it, from generation to generation. So there is a demand, there are people that know fiber and again we want from Clint Eastwood to Ralph Lauren lines of sweaters. The more designer demand the more use of alpaca fiber and the faster it will grow. Some of them are using it, there’s no question about it. So there is a demand. Leman Marcus and all the better stores will sell alpaca products from socks to even tuxedos and dress ware. Many of our farms have farm stores. Many of the alpaca farms will actually have a farm store on their premises selling from their own farm products or distributors. Ours, the Alpaca Shack, has 7 different distributors. I like to have a variety of products to offer the public and eventually I will have products from my own animals as well.
IL- “So what do you think about the future of farming in Vermont or the future farming of Alpacas?”
SH- “Alpacas are specifically growing, there are 40 alpaca farms in Vermont right now and Vermont is a small state.
IL- “That number’s on the rise you say.”
SH- “ Yes, that number is on the rise. Right now Ohio probably has, last count was I think 500 farms…a huge amount. So Ohio is a large state and for Vermont to have over 40 farms, probably closer to 50 or so farms right now, that’s a good amount.
JH- “Well when we came here two years ago there were only like 30 something in Vermont so we have grown a lot.”
SH- “Yeah, so in two years we have grown a lot to over 40 farms. More and more people are getting into this industry because people are realizing that they have land that can be put to use. For change of uh, life. You know, whatever meets their needs.
JH- “Its for the love of the animal.”
SH- “And for the love of the animal, of course. There’s no question about it. I don’t know how anybody could not fall in love with an alpaca. You see that face and…and we were smitten, absolutely smitten.
IL- “Is it your opinion that most of the farmers get by just living off the farm or do they have to have other jobs or is it difficult to make a living off the farm?”
SH- “The first couple of years its hard because depending on how many females, pregnant females you start with. If you start with 7 pregnant females you could end up with 14 alpacas in the first year, after the first year. So you’re doubling your herd. If your starting with 3 females like we did and only two of them are pregnant at the time and the first year we had two babies and they were both boys. They were both beautiful boys and they are future herd sires but the only way to grow a herd is to have girls. So there is a demand for alpacas for other alpaca breeders whether they’re established farms that are looking for another genetic line or if its new alpaca breeders like we were once that visited farms and fell in love with the alpaca and made friends with the alpaca breeders and wanted to do business with that particular farm. It does take a while to see a profit as does any business it could take two to three years, depends on what you want to sell. Of course, if your first babies are boys then you can sell 50% of them, half interest to another alpaca breeder but selling a female for lets say fifteen thousand dollars or up is obviously where the money would be. The most expensive male to date sold for $580,000 and its because of his progeny that speaks the baby’s walking to shows and coming out with a blue ribbon. And those are the kind of babies that breeders want, it’s the genetic line that makes that alpaca so special. We’re looking for the crimp, the luster, confirmation again is very important, and personality. They do have personality. They do know their names, they are extremely intelligent animals. But its definitely, if you got the money to start with than you don’t need another job and in our case I have two part time jobs. I am a bookkeeper.”
JH- “And unfortunately I became disabled.”
SH- “So he’s not able to work outside the farm.”
JH- “We discussed before we started the farm, you know um…I couldn’t do anything anymore. So it was different than New York City. And with me not able to work, you know, instead of going and Vermont particularly. And we bought the alpaca farm and since I can’t work I can be on the farm and watch the animals and feed them and take care of them and it doesn’t require as much strength to do things that I’m not allowed to. So I guess that’s another reason we started a farm.
SH- “Because again, they’re low maintenance, they’re very low maintenance. And we have wonderful neighbors that would help if he needed a hand like lifting an animal or if there is an emergency. All the alpaca people really in awe of each other. We really are, our vacations are now alpaca shows. When we go to an alpaca show for three days, that’s our fun. It’s better than, we love Aruba but it’s too hot, we love going to alpaca shows and showing the alpacas and hanging out with other alpaca people.
JH- “Yeah, we are like one family.”
SH- “One big family, very, very supportive.”
JH- “There is no hatred or hostility or he as a ribbon and I don’t. No.”
SH- “We’re all really happy for each other.”
JH- “If you can’t show your animal for whatever kind of reason another farmer will show it for you. No problem and vice versa.”
SH- “We are all really helpful to each other. And again our main interest is to see the business grow from a cottage industry to a mainstream. I personally am on a mission to have everybody own at least one alpaca product. Just so they can experience the joys of the alpaca. Again, I own a winter white alpaca coat, its more the 15 years old, and it looks brand new. It doesn’t fit me anymore but it looks brand new, and a black lynx sweater that is more than 20 years old that again, is in mint condition. The fiber speaks, it lasts. But getting back, do you need to have money from other sources? Absolutely I work two other part-time jobs.
IL- “So can you tell me a little bit more about showing your alpacas and why its important to do that or if it helps the business?”
SH- “For me the business is like advertising. Um, all the farms get to know you and when you’re walking into the ring and of course there are somewhere between 22 and 32, I just read, natural colors I’m trying to think where did they get ten more natural colors from? White to black and everything in between, there are different shades of fawn, gray, brown. Um, you go to a show and you’re not showing a black animal with a brown animal, you are showing black against black, male against male, female against female and that’s why it takes three or four days to show animals because there are so many different classes and age groups and the sex, you keep them separate. When you have a judge, a third person, you know your animal. Everyone thinks that their baby is the cutest and of course the criers are absolutely adorable. When you have an alpaca and you think that it’s the best alpaca around then you have a judge that comes in and says ‘This is what the alpaca should be’ and pins a blue ribbon on it, you’ve got a third person saying ‘This is a quality animal.’ If it’s a male, other farms are going to want to breed their female to that male so there’s also income.”
JH- “You put your farm on the market out there, and other people get to know you, other farms get to know you and its important. If nobody knows of you, you are not going to do any business.”
SH- “Advertising is very important in any industry but the going to the shows is the best marketing for alpaca people and of course your females, again …we’re talking genetics. There’s advertising in the Alpaca magazine, in American livestock there are all different ways to advertise your animals but the best way for other farmers to know that you are there is going to shows. And plus, you know, it’s a social event. You get to meet other alpaca people and then you also see ‘okay I have a white girl and I want to breed her with the best possible white male’ and that male took champion out of all the white males at that show that year and you choose the best at that show you’re probably going to end up with a one in thirty two percent chance of having a beautiful baby.
IL- “What do they look for when they judge an alpaca?”
SH- “They are looking at confirmation. They don’t know your farm, they don’t know who that animal came from, okay. There’s just a number on the animal. They are parting the fleece in three, four or five different places throughout the blanket of the animal and they are looking for the consistency of the crimp, of the staple length, how long that fleece is and if it is consistently crimpy throughout. The waviness, they are looking for the luster, the shine, and luster crimp density…the confirmation of course. They look at the bite to make sure that the teeth are right because if the teeth are bad in a male that’s something that’s a genetic flaw that will be passes down into the future generations. And that will make it difficult for the future generations to be grazing which will effect their health and future vegetation. You want to look at the whole package. You want look at the legs, the body. Your looking to see the boxy kind of a shape, you don’t want the neck too long, you don’t want the back too long. Um, you want the ears to be a spear shape, not banana shape because then there’s a probable chance that somewhere down the line grandma alpaca went across the border and had chili with grandpa llama. So, you want to keep the llama aspect out of the alpaca.
IL- “So what’s the difference between a llama and an alpaca?”
SH- “They are all from the camalid family. The llama was bred specifically as a pack animal and the alpaca was bred primarily for their fleeces, for the end product.
IL- “Do they have a softer fleece?”
SH- “ A much softer, you can use llama fleece to felt with but alpaca is much, much more softer. You can tell that they have a lower micron count than the llama so therefore they get a much softer fiber.
IL- “Now these shows, do they happen around here or are there lots of them?”
SH- “All over America. All over, um, it starts off…the northeastern area starts off in the beginning of April in Springfield, Massachusetts for the North American Alpaca show, and then we have the Futurity actually which is a really big show, but that’s in Indianapolis and right after that we have Mopaca which is in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Then there are a couple of other shows in Pennsylvania and they are all over the northeast and of course you can go down into Tennessee and into Virginia. They’re all over the western coast. I mean, it depends where, where and how far you want to travel and how many shows you want to go to.
JH- “Yeah, there are some up here, up here in New York.
SH- “Oh Syracuse, but that’s in October.
JH- “Then we have Maine.”
SH- “Yes, the Maine Coastal Classic. Yeah, so we’ll go to two shows in April and two shows in October and then we also decide when, when we are breeding the girls we don’t breed them for any April babies or any October babies because we’re at shows and even though we haven’t seen a baby born yet we would like to be on the farm around the time it happens just incase of something going wrong. We can decide when they are going to deliver the babies as far as time, even the one born behind your back. But yeah, we can decide when, we don’t want to have April babies then we breed them in June not May because we know the gestation period. So we are in control of that which is another nice thing about breeding alpacas.”
JH- “That little baby there she is two days old and she was born when her mother was 11 ˝ months.”
SH- “Gestation time is 347 days.”
JH- “The other lady is now, how many days?”
SH- “Tomorrow will be 345 days so any minute now. She can get the camera ready! Hahaha. She might actually be having it as we speak, we don’t even know. And again, they would have it behind the barn while we are sitting here. They aren’t going to do it right in front of us, they are going to want to do it in private. But its Peony’s first baby so we’re a little bit anxious and I can’t wait. It is very exciting.
IL- “Now, um, how did the alpacas react to the climate here?”
SH- “They love it. They come from Peru, Bolivia, Chili, South America, and some in the Andes where it’s cold. You have a wide variety of temperature changes and climate change from where it could be 40 degrees or 30 degrees and then by 11 o’clock its 70 degrees and by late afternoon the temperature is dropping again and by night fall its freezing. Though you got this huge variety of temperature changes throughout the day and they love the cold, you need to provide them.”
JH- “Some are 1000 feet high in the mountains so…”
SH- “They’re used to cold weather.”
JH- “ Usually if its born in the morning it gives time to dry them before it gets cold at night.”
SH- “So they’re out in the sun they’re dry and they have a better chance of surviving the night if they’re dry then if they’re wet and its cold. But um, that’s what makes alpaca products so warm is if uh, an alpaca can be rolling in the snow. You do need to provide them though with shelter for in climate weather, they do not like a hard rain or thunderstorms. You will see them all piling either into the barn or the run-in shelter. They don’t mind a light mist, they’ll be out grazing in a mist but if there’s a pouring rain you do need a shelter but of course if there’s a blizzard they’ll go into the shelter. If there’s a light snow, or you know, they’ll be out there. They don’t mind the cold at all. And by that time they love Vermont. Anywhere northeastern area, that’s why I think you’ll see so many farms popping up is because of the weather. We have, for the most part, we have pretty decent summers. They’re not horribly humid. They do need to be sheered in May, May preferably. We are actually sheering this afternoon. But they do need to be sheered before it gets too hot because they’ll bake. We’re talking dense, dense fiber. And they need to be shorn for the summer. And then by the time October or November rolls around, they’re ready for the winter.
IL- “So they don’t need a blanket or anything like that?”
SH- “Oh no. The babies would need a crier jacket if it was cold. Like right now, its still nippy so, they’re born with fleece but not teddy bear looking, just a little bit of fleece.
JH- “In the summers there are so hot and some of them will lay right in front of the fan.”
SH- “Yes, some of them are fan hogs and they won’t leave any space in front for anybody else just like but you do provide them with a shelter and a cool area and we put the fans low because they sweat out through their bellies. And never hose off an alpacas back because even by august their fleece is growing back and they can bake. It’s like a green house effect. They can bake and they will so you want them kept cool and you can hose off their bellies and they love that. They will line up and do their little cha-cha dance for the water but never get their backs wet, ever. So these are things that we learned from other alpaca breeders. Again, the support for the newbies is very important when your buying an alpaca and again, we came from Suburbia. We didn’t know anything about alpacas or being on a farm but we learned mostly from going um, and visiting farms and asking lots of questions. The more farms you visit the more you’ll learn. Everybody has their own way of doing things but there are certain things that must be done for alpacas, that everyone does. We’re all the same protocol, everyone’s on the same page.
IL- “So you mention that they’re easy to take care of…would you elaborate on what exactly you have to do to take care of them as far as feeding or anything else?”
SH- “Feeding, they get the girls and the boys get grain but the boys don’t get grain in the summer because they can graze but the girls are either pregnant or they’re nursing so they need to have grain all year long. So they’ll get grain that’s specifically made for alpacas. There is free choice minerals that we’ll put out for extra nutrition. We do supply them with second cutting hay. Alfalfa in generally too high in protein for them, which could cause other health problems and then they graze on land and they utilize one or two dump piles in the pasture, or poo piles, as their bathroom and they will line up to use that space. Um, one goes and they all gotta go so its not like walking through a mine field in the pasture. They are very meticulous animals, they are very clean.
JH- “Its all in the same spot.”
SH- “Yeah, very, very easy to clean up. And again, low maintenance feeding as far as…”
JH- “The only other thing is their injections every six weeks.”
SH- “Between April and November they require either dectomax or igomax which is to prevent a worm which is passed down from the tick. So between April and November we do give them the vaccination every, well we do give them the shot every 6 weeks.
JH- “I give the
shots, she does the nails.”
SH- “He’s better at it, I do the nails because its easier for me than
it is for him. And every three months all year long they do get manicure
safeguard which is for internal parasites. And the CET we give them once a
year, you can do it yourself, obviously its more manageable than it is
financially. If you have to have the vet come out to do everything then
its going to cost more. But uh, rabies once a year, the vet will come out
and do that.
And the vet will also come out hopefully…and that’s another important thing is having a vet that can take care of your animals because they are from the camalid family, llamas, alpacas, vicuńas, which are all part of the camalid family. Not everyone can care for an alpaca. Just because they can take care of a horse doesn’t mean that they can take care of an alpaca. They have specific needs, just ..medically. You can’t go in there and pull a baby out like you can with a cow so, one important thing is to make sure that if your going to relocate, your in an area that there is a vet that can take care of your alpaca. We lucked out. We got very, very lucky. That’s just one of the most important things that you really do need to address before you move anywhere.
IL- “So there’s a vet around here that you go to?”
SH- “Yes, there is.
JH- “In Salem.”
SH- “Yes, in Salem.
JH- “I think three of their doctors are special in camelids. And they are very good, so they take us and other farms on the New York side also in that vicinity we…
SH- “There are Alpaca farms in Salem, Shoushan, Cambridge, and of course they are like 20 to 35 minutes away. So we’re not far from eachother and that’s good. Bonnesville is closest to here. Brownsville, Pownal, I know there’s one in Pownal. They’re all over. They really are all over.
IL- “ So you mentioned pronking to me earlier. Can you describe that a little more?”
SH- “Pronking is alpaca vocabulary for, I don’t know if that’s in the dictionary or not, but something gets into the alpacas around dusk especially when it’s a cool evening they decide ‘we wanna run, we wanna get out ya-yas out’ and they start, especially the babies and adults will do it too. And some of the pregnant females will even get in on it, but the babies will just all of a sudden decide that they have to start running.
JH- “They make the funniest jumps.”
SH- “They tear into the pasture very fast and then they come around and then they like bounce with their heads held high and it just makes you feel happy to be alive when you watch this and they can do this for like ten minutes straight.
JH- “The baby did it yesterday.”
SH- “Oh no, Wednesday night. There wasn’t time to call you because they only did it for like less than five minutes. I almost ran to the phone to call you but she stopped before I even got to the house. She was just born that morning and she was pronking that night and that’s a really good sign that she is healthy. If they are just laying there and they don’t want to pronk ..
JH- “You can see her sitting so proudly.”