HiddenHillAlpacas.com
Title
Alpacas of Hidden Hill Farm -- New England farm offering quality American alpacas. Hidden Hill Farm Home Page
Description
When I moved back to the Northeast as a result of a corporate relocation, I wanted to buy a small farm property and enjoy myself by having some kind of livestock, in addition to my personal menagerie of dogs and cats. I had thought about llamas, having learned to love them from afar all my life. Once I embarked on an internet search of llamas, it was not thirty minutes before I discovered alpacas. Now, as an investment analyst by trade and a fiber artist by avocation, it did not take long for me to realize that here was an environmentally friendly form of luxury fiber-bearing livestock that was also a potentially valuable investment! I also was not unfamiliar with alpaca fiber – when you live in Dallas and have time and some disposable income, a personal shopper at Neiman Marcus exposes one to all the luxury fibers. I found that I owned an alpaca coat as well as a scarf that had traveled with me from my Wall Street days. Prior to and during the move, I visited many alpaca farms in New England as well as Texas. I had to know that I would actually enjoy alpacas, and found that, indeed, I did. I asked many questions and made a good many lifelong friends among the breeders that I met along my path of discovery.
My first farm was a perfect jewel – five acres on a private hilltop in suburban Bedford, New Hampshire – hard to believe I was within walking distance of a shopping plaza. I had to build a barn in the winter and put up pasture fencing. At the first Hidden Hill Farm (the name came from the location in Bedford), I actually had my fence contractor create chutes that took the alpacas from the paddocks to the pastures. Born out of a need to make certain that horses might be able to inhabit the barn once I had outgrown the farm, the chutes have since become a principal management tool that I employ daily at my current location. I learned about taking soil samples, obtaining permits, and the hiring (and firing) of barn contractors early on. About six months after I had everything “perfect” in Bedford, I had to start looking for a new farm – I had become infected with alpaca fever and my herd had doubled in a year!
It took nearly two years to find my current farm location – three of my alpaca clients have, on their first visits to my farm, declared it a ‘little piece of heaven,’ and I have to agree. My new Hidden Hill Farm is located at the end of a winding dirt road. It is actually hidden behind a hill and, when you wend your way past the hill, the farm comes into view. An antique Dutch barn is attached to the main house, and a brand new 60’X80’ barn up the road is “alpaca central.” We have 26 open acres of pasture, after clearing seventeen acres in the first winter, again employing a barn-to-paddocks-to-chutes-to-pastures approach. There are four main areas, including weanling female, adult female, weanling male and adult male pens. We have a lot of smaller areas within these large pens that can be closed off and used as catch pens to permit easy handling of alpacas for medical or other procedures, including halter training. The barn is entirely devoted to alpacas – there is a small vet room and a rodent-proof grain storage room but, apart from these and the pen areas, the rest of the barn is available for expansion space. Separate pen areas with attached paddocks on the other side of the barn from the alpaca pens permit us to quarantine new animals as well as provide breeding pens as necessary. Horse stall mats are used throughout the open aisle area of the barn as well as in the pens underneath bedding. All pen areas open onto enclosed paddocks, accessible through double Dutch doors. During the spring and summer months, we employ a series of “Mosquito Magnets ™” to eliminate as much as possible the seasonal black flies that visit us after Mud Season as well as mosquitoes, now that West Nile Virus appears to be firmly entrenched in the US. We tested one Mosquito Magnet up by our barn complex last year, and decided they really do the job, so we have three more to keep the pastures freer of these aerial pests.
Additional Information
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