I am in shock over the price of Alpacas, what am I getting for 40,000?

[zzGypsy]

BTW, in some of those rescues, many of the animals went to auction before they were rescued out and went to the kill buyers.

 

[BrownSheep]

I would not invest that much. Around here people used to pay thousands for llamas....now they give them away for free. I think I've even seen a couple alpacas advertised for free too.

 

[mocnarf]

Wow, I got my two alpacas for free. But I keep them more for pets rather than income producers. They earn their keep by going for walks with me. I walk them 3 to 4 miles every couple of days.

 

[Bruce]

@mocnarf you might notice that this thread "ended" in Jan 2012. People were being all loopy about making a fortune on alpacas back then. How? You pay a small fortune for a breeding pair. Then you sell the cria for many many hundreds of $$ to someone else who plans to make a fortune by breeding their expensive animals and selling the cria for many many hundreds of $$ to someone else who plans ..... . Problem was they ran out of people willing to buy into that "business model". People who didn't even have land invested in alpacas, writing off the expenses against other income. They were seriously pushed as a good investment.

In REALITY, there is potentially a little money to be made from the yearly shearing but most likely one would have to shear the animals themselves and do some "value add" to create a product they can sell to actually MAKE money.

I think it is great you are walking the boys. Besides the "quality time" you may never have to trim their nails since they are walking on hard surfaces!

 

[greybeard]

@mocnarf you might notice that this thread "ended" in Jan 2012. People were being all loopy about making a fortune on alpacas back then. How? You pay a small fortune for a breeding pair. Then you sell the cria for many many hundreds of $$ to someone else who plans to make a fortune by breeding their expensive animals and selling the cria for many many hundreds of $$ to someone else who plans ..... . Problem was they ran out of people willing to buy into that "business model". People who didn't even have land invested in alpacas, writing off the expenses against other income. They were seriously pushed as a good investment.

Sounds like the 90s emu pyramid scheme--the 'other red meat'...Alpacas = Emus with hooves.......Decades before that, it was Chinchillas.
Before that...well, a very similar version of the following actually appeared as an investment ad in a newspaper in 1875 and has been repeated numerous times since the advent of the internet.

Dear Potential Investor:
I know you are always looking for sound opportunities for investment.

I don't know if you would be interested in this, but I thought I would mention it to you because it could be a real "sleeper" in making a lot of money with very little investment.

A group of us are considering investing in a large cat ranch near Hermosille, Mexico. It is our purpose to start rather small, with about one million cats. Each cat averages about twelve kittens each year; skins can be sold for about 20 cents for the white ones and up to 40 cents for the black. This will give us 12 million cat skins per year to sell at an average price of around 32 cents, making our revenues about $3 million a year. This really averages out to $10 thousand a day - excluding Sundays and holidays.

A good Mexican cat man can skin about 50 cats per day at a wage of $3.15 a day. It will only take 663 men to operate the ranch so the net profit would be over $8,200 per day.

Now, the cats would be fed on rats exclusively. Rats multiply four times as fast as cats. We would start a rat ranch adjacent to our cat farm. If we start with a million rats, we will have four rats per cat each day. The rats will be fed on the carcasses of the cats that we skin. This will give each rat a quarter of a cat. You can see by this that this business is a clean operation -- self-supporting and really automatic throughout. The cats will eat the rats and the rats will eat the cats and we will get the skins.

Let me know if you are interested; as you can imagine, I am rather particular who I want to get into this, and want the fewest investors possible.

Eventually, it is my hope to cross the cats with snakes, for they will skin themselves twice a year! This would save the labor costs of skinning as well as give me two skins for one cat.

May I hear from you at your earliest opportunity?

Sincerely,

The CatMan

 

[Bruce]

Can't argue with logic and math @greybeard !!

I remember the emu thing. Used to be people were selling emu oil based things at the fair.

 

[OneFineAcre]

Dang
I would have dann sure invested in the Cat Ranch

 

[greybeard]

Can't argue with logic and math @greybeard !!

I remember the emu thing. Used to be people were selling emu oil based things at the fair.

You still see the oil being sold, but in the 90s, eggs and meat from Emu was TNBT. By the time 1996 rolled around, the gig was up and even the campy movie Tremors 2 Aftershocks showed that co star Fred ward aka Earl Bassett had squandered his magazine interview and book rights and video game $$$ trying to cash in on the Emu craze, and his 1st scene had him being dragged @ rope's length by the male as he was trying to introduce Wildfire to one of his females.
"Wildfire, if you and Suzy don't get together and make me some little Emus I'm gonna take some BBQ sauce to the both of you!"

OFA, at some point, snakes were also introduced into the cat-rat ranch scheme.

Eventually it is our hope to cross the cats with snakes, for they will
skin themselves twice a year. This would save the labor costs for skinning
as well as give us two skins for each one cat.

so if you don't like serpents, better pass on this one.