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Alpaca Breeder Farm

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Dutch Creek Gardens LLC is located one mile from Lake Darling State Park, an Iowa State Park, which is being restored to one of the most enjoyable recreation spots in southeast Iowa. Five years ago, we retired from 30 plus years of public education. We bought an eighty-acre farm; returned the tillable acres to Native Prairie Grasses and Wildflowers, built a new Victorian home, planted one hundred fruit trees, and planted a one-acre vineyard. Now, in the morning as the mist is rising off the two and half acre pond, we listen to the ring-tailed pheasants crow in the grasses. In the evening, it is the bullfrogs that serenade us when they aren’t being hunted by the big blue heron. In late spring, we hunt for the elusive and oh, so tasty morel mushrooms. But mostly we put on our working clothes and set about living the country life mowing grass, tending to twenty flower gardens, inspecting, pruning, and caring for the trees and vines.

In the midst of all of this, we discovered Alpacas. We researched alpaca husbandry. And in short we fell in love with these humming, gentle creatures. So, in 2007, we bought our first alpacas. We looked for correct conformation and outstanding mothering qualities in our bred females. We found two we really liked. We now have three outstanding females here and soon we will have two more, plus their crias. We are now proud to begin producing our own high quality greys and blacks focusing on quality genetics. We have just purchased our Herdsire, Vanilla Ice, out of the Victor bloodline and we look forward to having great alpacas with dense, crimpy fiber and lots of it for years to come.
We take care of our alpacas with the same care we gave our students for so many years. We exercise sound and humane treatment. Our goal is to give our customers, whether they are new to the alpaca business or just wanting more quality animals to add to their existing herd, the same understanding care and consideration that we were given when we were farm visiting and when we purchased our animals. What we know, we will willingly share. Our number one goal will be to only sell quality animals. Our second goal will be to provide quality service to our customers.

We look forward to visitors coming to our farm. We hope you will call us and we will plan for a leisurely afternoon or early evening visit. Most of all whether you are new to alpacas, considering your first purchase of an alpaca or if you are an experienced alpaca rancher, we hope you will experience the relaxation and peacefulness of our farm. When you leave, we hope you will know why we call here, ‘A place of the heart’.