Spent the day helping my sheep shearer friend shear her alpacas, only it turned out that she had a surplus of help. I felt a bit like a fifth wheel....but it was fun nonetheless.

Have decided I don't want to raise alpacas. Maybe 2-3 Suri wethers, but not as a large scale thing. They cost about a ton of hay to feed per year ($125) and the fleeces go for about $40, so it would make more sense to just buy the fleece, unless I got them, had them shorn and then ate them (they taste wonderful)... They are very picky about hay, will starve if you don't allow them to waste it, but more than that, I don't find them personally satisfying to work with. They look cuddly, don't they? Well, they are not. They don't even like to be looked at, let alone touched. Some of them have personalities that are pretty horrid. On the other hand, I wouldn't feel bad about butchering them for meat, because they are more like livestock than the more personable goats. The Angora goats, on the other hand, are easy to raise, not as mischievous as dairy goats, friendly, witty and much more therapeutic than either alpacas or sheep. They reproduce at a much faster rate than alpacas, have fewer birthing and other health problems, are easy to handle....and are shorter so would be more suited to grazing underneath fruit or nut trees.