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Alpaca Breeder Farm

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Welcome to the Quipus Alpaca Ranch!! (Pronounced Key-poo)

We are a small ranch in Athens county Ohio, dedicated to caring for and maintaining the best of what the Suri breed of alpaca have to offer.

How did we decide to start an alpaca ranch? Well...

Throughout our lives and travels, we developed an immense appreciation for nature. When it was time to pick a place to settle down, we decided on Athens county Ohio. While only a little over an hour from our hometown Columbus, it had much of the splendor, beauty, and seclusion of our favorite places of travel. Athens having one of the best local organic farmers markets in the Midwest, and Neil having a culinary degree was another selling point =). We scoured the internet, and newspapers for properties in the area for over 3 years before finding our perfect little 17 acre plot.

With a limited amount of barn and pasture area, our next task was deciding on what type of animals to have on our property. We had always liked the idea of bison; native, good for the land, tasty and healthy... and to big for our means! Pigs, goats, horses, and cows all were brought here from Europe and are not good for the land. Their hooves turn up the soil and they pull the grass up from the root, and in no time, they have destroyed much of the land they occupy. So they were decided against.

One night while watching Disney's "Emperor's New Groove", we discussed the fact that we had seen llama ranches all over, and maybe we should consider them. Only having heard of them through her veterinary background, Heather suggested alpaca instead, a close relative of the llama in the camelid family, but about a third the size. Thinking back, and remembering at times hearing friends, parents, and co-workers of notable success and respectability talking about alpaca, and even investing in them, we thought "if all these successful people have looked into and invested, there must be a viable reason."

Once we started actually looking into them, we quickly realized alpaca were the perfect livestock for our situation, and our interests. Having padded feet, they press down the earth, and with only having a few dull teeth on their bottom jaw, they break the grass off about half way down, essentially being a lawnmower, and their manure comes out already composted, making them good for the land. As a business investment, they proved equally opportune, and with as much if not more potential, than any other option we had considered. In fact, the IRS gave alpaca owners a separate tax bracket from other livestock owners (179), with our own special set of tax breaks!

Upon finding our property, and deciding on alpaca, we started researching and learning about these beautiful creatures history. Archaeological records have shown that alpaca have been domesticated for at least 6 thousand years, originating in the western slope of the Andes mountains in Peru, and eventually spanning the entirety of the Andes down into Bolivia, and Chile. Cultivated by the Quechua Indian tribe, and by the Inca, they were considered "gifts of the gods" and were sacred, only being owned and cultivated by royalty, and holy men. There are 2 distinct breeds of alpaca, Huacaya and Suri. The Huacaya make up 99% of the world population, and around 83% of the US population, and have a fluffy, woolly look, almost like a perm or afro. As we typically like the rare and unique, we found the Suri breed, making up 1% world and 17% US population, to be no exception, and quickly realized this would be the breed for us.

The first depictions of Suri alpaca have dated from between 5 and 20 thousand years ago, and are only in the western Andes of Peru. Pre-Colonial textiles, pottery, and jewelry distinguish Suri as a distinct breed from their Huacaya counterpart. Dr. Julio Sumar, the world-renowned alpaca "guru", has said the word "Suri" originates from the Aymara language, and refers to the lustrous quality exhibited by the feathers of the ostrich's South American cousin, the Rhea.

Unique fiber characters, have given the Suri its distinctness within the camelid family. Their hair, or "fiber", grows parallel to the body, hanging in long, separate, distinctive locks, which enhance its artistic and graceful appearance compared to their Huacaya counterpart. The Suri fiber has a slick hand and softness, with an exquisite luster, and drapes in either twisted, or flat locks of various size.

Coveted by top fashion designers such as Armani, the Suri fiber is the absolute ultimate fiber. Its softness overshadows cashmere, more luster than silk, warmth is seconded only by polar bear fur, stronger and more durable than wool, and its ability to blend with other materials, and accept color dyeing, makes this the best, most sought after fiber in the world for spinning, knitting, crocheting, or weaving.

Of both breeds, the top bloodlines are called "Accoyo". Perfected by Dr. Julio, this breed standard is representative of the most density, fineness, and luster of the alpaca fiber. Basically, the Accoyo standard represents the animals bred with the most, and best fiber... period. We have chosen to focus our ranch on full Accoyo Suri alpaca, the best of the best. This marketability, combined with our love for animals of all kind, and the Suri alpacas extraordinary vigor, intelligence, ease of breeding, and adaptability to hot and cold climates, make the whole of why we chose to embark in what we are already discovering to be a fantastic new lifestyle.

How did we decide on the name "Quipus Alpaca Ranch"? Well...

When we decided to start an alpaca ranch, we chose to go with the rare and highly regarded Suri breed. There are many things one must do upon starting a business/venture of this sort, but one of the most challenging parts was choosing an appropriate name. We did not want a "cute" or "catchy" name like some we have seen, but were looking for something original, meaningful, and which paid homage to the unique origins of this incredible animal.

Throughout the course of researching and learning about alpaca, we learned that for thousands of years, they had been cultivated by the Quechua Indians, who populated much of the span of the Andes Mountains of South America. While learning about their culture, we discovered they did not have a written language, but kept their history with a system called "Quipus". This system uses a colored spun or piled thread made with alpaca fiber, and from this hung various numbers of cords which contained numeric and other values encoded by knots in a base ten positional system.

In the discovery of this, we learned that "Quipus" literally means "talking knots" or "knotted string". Since we had chosen to go with the Suri breed of alpaca, whose fiber naturally knots, or locks, we realized this was perfect for us! Quipus Alpaca Ranch, literally means "ranch with knot stringed alpaca". A quick check and we saw that no other Suri farm/ranch had claimed the name, and the Quipus Alpaca Ranch was born!