About Us

Making a start on the fencing in our
second field Larger (158KB)

We've almost finished the fencing...just the
wire and the gates to put on now!
Larger (150KB)

It all started in 2003 when Martin bought a magazine which featured an Alpaca and Llama supplement. We were smitten with these lovely creatures with such large, kind eyes. I had always regretted not pursuing a career in the Veterinary field and Martin had always wanted to work the land his father had given to him, which had been in his family for fifty years. Maybe alpaca farming was the answer for us both?

We read quite a few alpaca articles in various magazines, researched alpaca ownership on the internet and spoke to other alpaca breeders. We were very excited at the prospect of becoming involved in this different way of life and within a few weeks we decided we would buy two pregnant females and ‘give it a go’! Our venture had begun!!!

We set about preparing the land for the alpacas’ arrival. We planted Weeping Willow trees for future shade and started on the paddock fencing and field shelters….Also, the whole perimeter of our land had to be fenced off to keep our two Golden Retrievers, Sasha and Chloe, from straying.

By the Summer of 2004, we decided we would definitely pursue farming alpacas as a business and started to think about progressing it as such.

In April 2005, our maiden alpaca, Audrey had a very difficult birth and was left very weak and later collapsed with exhaustion. She was unable to stand and so her cria Amber wasn’t able to feed. The crucial five hours passed and we needed to stomach tube Amber with the Alpaca Colostrum, or we’d lose her… I had only seen this done once and didn’t feel competent enough, so we called our Vet who done this for us. Martin and I had to watch over Audrey and Amber all night, sitting in his transit van with the lights shining onto mother and cria in the field shelter! It got to nearly 3.00am and Amber still hadn’t been able to feed from Audrey so we went up to our caravan in the barn, in the pitch black of the night and managed to make up a bottle of milk by torch light!! I was just about to start to try and feed Amber with the bottle, when Audrey stood up and Amber started to try and feed from her! I waited for a while and eventually was relieved to see Amber feeding from her mum! What a relief, we really didn’t want to have to intervene.

After this night of sitting up watching over Audrey and Amber, Martin and I concluded that if our alpaca business had any chance of succeeding, then we would need to be living on site, for the sake of the cria in the birthing season.

In the Summer of 2005 we obtained planning permission for a log cabin to be built on our land, enabling us and our two teenage boys to live on site with our alpacas and progress the alpaca business.

We chose Windmill Lodges in Suffolk to supply and build our log cabin. They did a fantastic job and it was completed within twelve weeks from start to finish!! Their team are really lovely people - professional, competent and friendly - by the time they had finished we were really sad to see them leave, they had become like family to us.

We moved into our log cabin on 14th November 2005. We have been so busy since moving in with getting the business properly up and running….but we are all loving it…..and so do Sasha and Chloe…..they see so much wildlife now……rabbits, pheasants, ducks……they can‘t believe their eyes!!!!!