The History of Starlight
In 2003 Anita and Tom decided that having 65 acres of land, about 30 of which were good tillable acres, they would like to get some animals to begin grazing on the land. If they did not, Anita would be trying to get Tom to mow all 30 acres and turn it into a park. Tom was not very excited about doing that, however. So, they began to discuss what type of animals to get.
After several months of researching different breeds of animals, they saw a TV ad about alpacas and became interested. Further research found several alpaca farms within reasonable driving distance in Missouri and they set out to visit them and learn more about the alpacas. After visiting three farms, they were convinced that they wanted to have alpacas on their farm, perhaps as a hobby or even as a business. Their original thought was to start out with about 5 females and see where things might go from there. The rest, as they say, is history.
When we made our first purchases, we settled on ten- three bred females with three crias at their sides, three bred females which we leased, and one breeding male. We were to leave these alpacas at the selling farm for up to six months so we would have time to plan and build our barn and pastures. Shortly after that purchase, in unforeseeable circumstances, our sellers lost the lease on their farm. We made a deal to bring their herd to our farm and to form a partnership wherein we would care for the alpacas and the partner would be the selling arm of the partnership. While we were just starting the roof on the barn, a trailer arrived with the first twenty alpacas. A week later, twenty-five more arrived, and five more arrived over the next few weeks. Our herd of ten became sixty. We were bowled over with this mass arrival, and spent the first few ragged months learning about alpaca care, breeding and birthing. We truly learned “under fire”.
All went well though. They started right into cria care, then breeding, and all the details of toenail care, deworming, giving shots, building the necessary feeders, barns and fences. All of this occurred in the late Spring of 2004. By the end of the Summer, Starlight had a basic barn, a variety of paddock areas, and quite a few completed pastures. Then it was time to get ready for the first season of cria births in the Fall of 2004. As luck would have it, the first cria born arrived in one of the pastures while Tom was home alone. After much panic, and fear of being attacked by protective females, Tom was able to easily bring the cria into the barn, get a weight and temperature, create the cria information sheet and watch for the placenta to pass.
The next cria born was shoulder locked and needed help being born. After calling the vet, and listening as he told us how to help the birthing process, we did what we had to do, scared to death the whole time. The arrival of a healthy cria preceded the arrival of the vet. All was well with cria and mom and from then on, cria births became a much more routine activity. Since that time, we have had 87 crias born on the ranch.
Currently, there are 90 alpacas here at Starlight Alpaca Ranch, 37 agisted for other alpaca owners and 53 owned by Starlight Alpacas. We are also anxiously anticipating the births of 31 new crias in 2009- 11 in the Spring and 20 in the Fall.
Life in the alpaca world has been wonderful. The more that people learn about our alpaca operation, the more visitors we have to our ranch. We have many school field trips for young elementary students in both the Spring and Fall of the year. In 2008, we had over 350 students and 175 accompanying adults come to the ranch to see, feed and learn about the alpacas. In addition, we host charitable events at the ranch for groups assisting with childhood diseases. And we have many “drop in” visitors all year long who wish to see the alpacas and learn more about them. Not only are the alpacas a pleasure to be around, but it has given us the chance to meet many wonderful people from our community and many visitors to the area who hear about us.