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Alpaca Breeder Farm

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Southern Estate Alpacas was established in the Fall of 2008 by Jerry and Liz Bates. Jerry is the Finance Director at Select Luxury Cars www.selectluxury.com where they sell high-line import vehicles all over the world and Liz is a Territory Sales Manager in Pharmaceutical sales for Inventiv Health. We both enjoy our jobs to the utmost, however, we are apart from each other 6 days a week and long to be together.

After extensive research and visiting several alpaca farms we came to realize they all seemed to have one thing in common...they are all run by "happy couples just like us!!" Wow...what a concept! It was amazing to visit each farm and notice the stress free life style they all lived being around alpacas! We both mutually agreed this was a lifestyle we wanted to pursue, a way to supplement our income and provide an excellent opportunity for retirement. The more research we do the better raising alpacas seems to get. We are so excited about creating a farm where people can come visit and see what attracted us to the "alpaca way of life!"

Liz and I have started slow and with more expensive and higher quality alpacas to ensure our herd starts off above average. We are doing this to enable us to end up with a top notch farm right from the beginning. We feel the research we have done and the friends we have made along the way will help us achieve our dream of spending our days together.

After searching and praying for the “perfect farm” we have finally found the new home for Southern Estate Alpacas! Our new home is in Adairsville, Ga. which is situated just north of Cartersville about half way between Atlanta and Tennessee. We found 20 acres of lush green pastures fenced and cross-fenced with 5 foot high welded steel framed fencing and a 15 stall barn complete with living quarters to house prospective clients or traveling shearers.

Southern Estate Alpacas is conveniently located 7 miles off exit #296 on I-75 near Barnsley Garden Golf Our Alpaca Story...

Last fall Liz had a high school reunion coming up in New Jersey she wanted to attend to see some old friends that she had not kept up with since her school days. We both were contemplating on going but realized it would cost approximately $1500 to fly up to New Jersey, stay in a hotel, and rent a car so she gave me an option...either go to the reunion...OR...Liz had seen an "Alpaca Commercial" on Fox News and wanted to visit an Alpaca Farm that same weekend during "National Alpaca Farm Days". I decided to go with "plan B" thinking it would be much easier and less expensive way to go. Boy was I wrong!! At least I will admit being wrong this time! I did some research after googling "alpacas" and found Destiny Alpacas a short 2 hour drive from our house and called Larry and Cathi to schedule an appointment for our visit. Cathi was excited for us to come up and visit because they just had a new cria born that day! I had no idea just how cute new crias were at the time so I was still thinking "plan B" was definitely the way to go!

Well...as you can imagine it was love at first sight! The next thing I saw was Liz standing there holding "Jet" (Liz actually named him!) with the biggest smile I have ever seen! I think it was even bigger than the one she had walking down the aisle to marry me! Only about a month later we sold some stock that had split in half during the declining economy in 2008 and wrote a check for $27,700.00 for two (2) pregnant females! Wow...the $1500.00 high school reunion all of the sudden seemed to be a much cheaper choice!

We now have 34 Hucayas (5 males and 29 females) and a start to our dream lifestyle of being together raising alpacas. Liz and I were searching for an alternative investment opportunity that would offer a substantial tax shelter and a way of life that we could enjoy many years after retiring from our "real" jobs.