Alpaca herds increasingly finding homes in the county
Santa Cruz Sentinel - November 27 2006
They look a little like camels, a little like sheep, and the hills are alive with the sound of their humming. They are alpacas, a South American import, and the livestock of choice for several people in Santa Cruz County."People have sheep and goats, but these are so unusual," said Brenda Volberg, keeper of 22 mop-topped alpacas in the hills surrounding Watsonville.
Volberg, a first-grade teacher at Radcliffe Elementary, started her operation nearly three years ago with three animals from Corralitos. Since then, she has weathered the loss of three in her herd, two to feeding problems and one to dogs. Every weekday after school she spends about an hour and a half with them, feeding, shoveling manure, then tucking them in for the night.
[...]They look a little like camels, a little like sheep, and the hills are alive with the sound of their humming. They are alpacas, a South American import, and the livestock of choice for several people in Santa Cruz County.
"People have sheep and goats, but these are so unusual," said Brenda Volberg, keeper of 22 mop-topped alpacas in the hills surrounding Watsonville.
Volberg, a first-grade teacher at Radcliffe Elementary, started her operation nearly three years ago with three animals from Corralitos. Since then, she has weathered the loss of three in her herd, two to feeding problems and one to dogs. Every weekday after school she spends about an hour and a half with them, feeding, shoveling manure, then tucking them in for the night.
"When I come home from work, and we have all this pressure with the state tests, and stress, it's a release. It's no pressure," she said.
Even though the animals are a business, they've also become family, she said, which makes selling her best animals for breeding stock harder and harder each year.[more]
Comments