Sometimes a career change takes on the appearance of “another day at work.” After 30 years of building bridges, highways and tunnels, Bob, a retired construction engineer, continues building his dream - a ranch: buying equipment, clearing land, planting pastures, building barns and sheds, erecting fences. Meanwhile, Louise, mother of their four children and a retired EMT, is feeding, training, birthing, administering meds, and caring for their “second family.” This may sound like parallel careers, but the difference is in the animals - ALPACAS!

After purchasing 20 acres of New England Prime “Rock and Woods,” our ranch was under construction, but what do we raise? Our thought process eliminated many forms of livestock as too big, too bothersome, too dangerous, but once we actually met an alpaca, the answer was obvious - We fell in love with Alpacas! These friendly, peaceful, “Huggable” animals are easy to care for and require a relatively small area of land.

Our ranch came together quickly as we cleared 3+ acres in June ’98. While the barn was erected that summer, Bob, Louise and many wonderful friends were busy making pastures, erecting fences, etc., and most importantly - selecting our alpacas.

Our alpaca ranch officially opened on Nov. 17, 1998 with the arrival of our six alpacas and a guard llama. During the first year, our original 6 animals grew to 38 through acquisitions and the birth of 12 cria. With this first year came a wealth of excitement, experience and knowledge.

The millennium saw our alpaca herd grow to 60 including the birth of 20 cria. We added pastures, several buildings and doubled the size of our barn. 2001 saw the arrival of 21 beautiful cria and 28 more arrived in 2002.

From the beginning Bob has been intrigued by the Alpacas beautiful colors and Louise has been captivated by their unique, individual personalities. We selected our alpacas for correct conformation and, fine, dense, lustrous fiber, but with the additional prime accent on Color and Personality.

Ten years later we continue to work on fences and pastures as the herd consists of 100+ alpacas and 3 guard llamas. We have added the services of Champion herdsires DPA Peruvian Powerplay, SA Peruvian Normandy, the infamous Snowmass Nova, and even a full accoyo, Nadia’s Accoyo Romeo. Most important, we are in our 3rd year in our beautiful new house at the Ranch ending years of a 1 mile commute that kept us too far from the animals.

Bob & Louise are the proud parents of their four children - two sons and two daughters. Jason is a Graduate of VA Tech, Structural Engineering. He is presently working as a Consultant Engineer locally and assisting with the family business on weekends. Greg has a Doctorate in Geo-Technical Engineering from GA Tech and lives in Atlanta. Twin daughters are Kim and Kay. With a degree from Case Western, Kim is now pursuing a Physician’s Assistant Degree from Toledo. After a stint in the Army Reserves, Kay works locally for a Property Management Company. In October 2006 we were proud to add another Engineer to the family—Greg’s new wife, Tammy. Finally we were able to update the website picture (above).

We invite you to explore our web site, contact us and visit our alpaca ranch! We look forward to assisting you in any way possible.