At the tail end of a fulfilling career at the University of Missouri hospital as a medical technologist, Diane Peckham was ready for retirement in the country. She and her husband Nick waved goodbye to the last of their three children to leave for college and packed up the household for 50 acres of woods, pasture and a creek in Columbia , Missouri.

Though she’d never farmed before, Diane suspected she’d find keeping animals a joy. She knew she didn’t want big beasts like cows and horses that could take a lot of physical strength to handle. And the notion of taking animals to market after lovingly raising from babies was distasteful to her, ruling out sheep and other small meat animals. So Diane honed in on fibers. She went out in search of llamas, a woolly pack animal from South America still a little hefty for her taste, and inadvertently discovered alpacas. 

“I just saw them and fell in love with them,” Diane recalls of the first alpacas she laid eyes on. “They’re pretty cool animals.”

These petite llama look-alikes also hail from the highlands of South America . They have short, perky ears like cats, weight between 100 and 200 pounds and stand just three feet tall at the withers (the tallest height on the back of an animal). Almost small enough to cuddle, alpacas have soft, silky wool in 22 color variations that hangs in loose ringlets or blankets their bodies thick and fluffy. The luxurious fiber comparable to cashmere is, indeed, “their only purpose in life,” according to Diane, although she admits alpaca meat can be eaten.

Diane shears about 150 pounds of wool off her herd of 30 animals each year, half of which is the high quality “blanket fiber” from the saddle area worth about $50 a pound. She cleans and cards the fiber and brings it to craft fairs and alpaca shows to educate people about an animal still considered exotic in the United States . Most she sends to the American Fiber Cooperative of North America, which processes and markets the fiber of about 700 small-scale producers in the United States and Canada .

Diane breeds alpacas and sells eight or more animals a year at anywhere from $500 for a gelded male to $16,500 for a pregnant female. As part of an emerging industry in the United States , breeders strive to improve the genetic quality of their herds for finer strands of wool and denser growth, and to increase the overall number of alpacas in the country. At a certain threshold of registered animals, Diane explained, a commercial alpaca fiber industry can be established domestically, enabling more opportunities for marketing the product.

When she bought her first two males in 1989 and a pregnant female a few years later, Diane was a pioneer. There were few alpacas in Missouri , only 3,000 in all of North America , and the Alpaca Owners and Breeders Association, the national body promoting and disseminating information about alpacas hadn’t yet convened its first annual conference. There are now over 50,000 alpacas in North America and the AOBA conference draws over 500 owners who come to show their animals in competitions and network with and learn from others in the industry.

This mid-Missouri alpaca expert taught herself most of what she knows, and can tell you anything from how to care for a pregnant female to the textures associated with various colors of wool, to the benefit of keeping records of each animal’s bloodlines. She knows a lot as well about black Angora goats, which she experimented with for five years.

Admitting she adores goats, Diane was fascinated by the Angoras deep black coat. The only naturally dyed black fiber, she marvels, comes from black-fleeced animals because no plants produce a black dye.

But her Angoras had more health problems than the alpacas. They required maintenance such as hoof-trimming, and their fiber, less valuable than alpaca wool, was full of oily, hard-to-wash-out lanolin. Plus, Diane chuckled, goats are trouble-makers. “They learned how to open gates, which was a problem.” So she sold the angoras and turned her entire focus to the alpacas.

Diane rotationally grazes the herd on eight sections of a 15 acre pasture, and supplements that with alfalfa hay and a pound per animal of grain. She manages their health by treating them monthly for worms, shearing annually (to prevent overheating) and vaccinating annually against the most aggressive diseases affecting alpacas.

Diane recommends her favorite fiber animal to anyone interested in operating a low-input farm, even in addition to a full-time, off-farm job. She never intended to get rich with alpacas but sees the occupation as a good retirement plan in terms of earning a modest income and celebrating life in the countryside.

“It’s very satisfying to see our animals and feel their fiber and see their babies,” Diane revels about her 30 gentle friends.

Key resources:

• Alpaca Owners and Buyers Association
• “Medicine and Surgery of South American Camelids” by Murray e. Fowler, 2nd Ed., 1989, published by the Iowa State Press