About Us

We are a small Alpaca ranch located in North Central Montana. Our Business name is Prairie Sun Alpacas,LLC. We have been building our Alpaca business since 2002.

We first became interestd in Alpacas when watching a commercial on T.V. The ad was generated by the Alpaca Owners and Breeders Association or AOBA. The theme was "i.love.alpacas".

We were immediately drawn to the Alpaca Business. In Montana there were few Alpaca farms/ranches at that time. Our journey took us to Portland, Oregon where we attended a class on raising and breeding Alpacas.

At the time it was suggested that we spend a minimum of $100,000 to establish our business. That was not in our financial picture. But we were not turned away. We truly found that we loved these animals.

We headed back to Montana with the hopes of building an Alpaca Business on a budget. We knew it would be slow but were willing to take our time.

Our first 2 Alpacas were a pair of geldings. We knew that Alpacas needed to be with other Alpacas. We did not know how to care for these animals or if they would withstand our extreme weather conditions. This was the cheapest way we could find to learn about these animals.

After we had confidence in our abilities we purchased our first 2 breeding animals. We purchased them young so they were cheap. We had our female bred to a different male the first 2 years as our young male would take a while to develop.

I still remember the day our first cria was born! We were so excited. We have now successfully delivered 5 cria. We have been blessed with 4 females and 1 male.

While we were busy learning about the animal itself and how to care for Alpacas properly we were also delving into the fleece industry. We looked at lots of product and yarns. We had a logo designed especially for us by a local artist.

We taught ourselves how to shear as a necessity. We could not find a shearer in our area. We packaged the fleece as best we could. We looked at Coops but the fees and requirements were too much for us at this time.

During this discovery period I learned to card and spin the fiber. I learned to weave and have experimented with dyes and specialty yarns. Our fleece business soon took off in ways I couln't have imagined.

We have had a lot of glitches in the way and experiments for selling fiber and products that didn't work well. But we have learned from our mistakes and keep working to build our business.

We try our hardest to come up with new products for our customers. In March of 2009 we introduced a Shearing Table Kit and had success with selling the kits plus it got us off our knees for shearing.

The economy was the next struggle for us. Just when our herd size was large enough that we could now look at selling our animals the market was too low. We turned the majority of our energy into building the fleece part of our business.

Being in an isolated location we depend a lot on the Internet. The internet has been effective in leveling the playing field for a vast number of businesses.

In addition to selling alpacas,products, fleece, and yarn on our alpacanation website, www.prairiesunalpacas.com , we sell to local people in our area. Our yarn, fleece, and roving is now carried in a store in downtown Helena, Montana.

Today we continue to work on building our herd and improving the genetics or our herd. I spin and work with fleece on a daily basis. And of course we continue to expand our horizons with new ventures in the Alpaca market.

As many Alpaca ranchers, we had been struggling with a solution to our shearing table needs. We now sell a Shearing Table Kit that is far less expensive than commercial tables and has more options! Jurry, our Introductory price will end soon.

Subscribe to our new free monthly ezine "The Fleece Niche" by filling out the form below. You will receive an email the first Tuesday of every month that will keep you up to date on changes and sales.

Check out our new Farm Store and recieve a $10.00 gift card to shop-blue-rose.com with any order of $20.00 or more!

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