Worth Township farm is home to herd of alpacas
WORTH TWP — Growing up on a farm in Prospect, Christine Scheer could not wait to get away.
“I wanted to leave as quick as possible because I was never going to touch dirt again,” she said.
It’s funny how life works out because she and her husband of 40 years, Patrick, have been running an alpaca farm for the last 17 years just 15 miles from her childhood home.
West Park Alpacas, 1037 W. Park Road, is home to 36 of the South American mammals, three Great Pyrenees dogs who act as protectors and watchdogs for the herd, a number of chickens and one ornery goat.
The Scheers raise their alpacas for their fleece, which they call superior to wool, because the alpaca fleece doesn’t contain lanolin, isn’t scratchy and is water resistant.
The Scheers have their alpacas sheared once each year in the spring. The fleece is sent to a mini-mill in New York, where it is converted to batting and sent back.
According to the Alpaca Owners Association, each shearing produces roughly five to 10 pounds of fleece per animal, per year. This fleece can be turned into yarn, clothing, blankets and tapestries.
Christine Scheer attaches felt to the batting and makes scarves, handbags and other items that she sells in a shop along with hats, gloves and other items imported from South America.
It’s a far cry from the Scheers’ previous life in California, where he designed restaurants and she worked as a secretary/designer in their firm of STDR Architects.
Patrick Scheer said when they decided to retire, he had fallen in love with the area after numerous trips to Butler County to see his in-laws.
When plans to start a branch office of the architectural firm in Pennsylvania fell through, the Scheers needed another candidate for a second career.
“I bought an alpaca teddy bear at a street fair,” said Christine Scheer. “I went to an alpaca farm in Mercer County.”
An alpaca farm seemed like a viable alternative, especially with the then-present tax breaks that were available to the starting-out alpaca rancher. Patrick Scheer said that at the time, would-be alpaca raisers could get “a tax credit for 100% of the investment costs.”
So, they found themselves with 22 acres of land and five pregnant alpacas that would provide the beginnings of their herd.
Alpacas proved to be a perfect animal for a beginning rancher. Alpacas, which generally grow to be 38 inches tall and weigh up to 180 pounds, are social animals that are gentle, quiet and easily herded.
“They’re easy and docile,” he said. “They won’t challenge you; they won’t challenge fences. They’re not exactly friendly. They generally ignore you unless you have cookies in your hand.”
“They get very, very spoiled and if you don’t have treats for them, they will have other things to do,” he said. “They graze in the pasture and get hay and grain in the winter.”
Because they aren’t hooved animals, they don’t tear up the grass, although they do need their toe nails clipped at regular intervals.
While they eat grass, alpacas nip it off and don’t tear it out by the roots the way a goat does. They are herd animals, and an individual alpaca will do poorly without other alpacas around him.
They are quiet. Alpacas generally limit themselves to humming and snorting although they can scream when they are being mistreated or being attacked.
Alpacas like the weather to be cool and dry. During humid summer days, the Scheers put out fans.
Patrick Scheer said, “In the winter, they love the weather. You’ll come out and find they slept out all night and they look like lumps in the snow. They can take about any temperature.”
Alpacas are often confused for llamas, another South American animal imported to the United States. They are much shorter than llamas, which can weigh up to 120 pounds more than an adult alpaca. Llamas have a coarser fleece than an alpaca and were domesticated to serve as pack animals while alpacas were tamed for their fine fleece.
A pack of dogs or coyotes could be dangerous to an alpaca, which explains the electrified fence that surrounds their pastures at West Park Alpacas. A coyote wouldn’t attack alpacas in a herd, he said, but it would go after a young alpaca on its own.
A harder enemy to defend against are the diseases that Pennsylvania’s white tail deer carry which can be passed to alpacas. Most common are meningeal worms or brainworms, which can pass from deer to alpacas through snails.
Snails crawl through deer feces filled with the brainworm larvae. Snails can be eaten by an grazing alpaca passing the larvae onto the new animal.
The Scheers guard against this with monthly inoculations for their animals.
They keep their alpaca herd separated by sex, only bringing individual males and females together for births in the fall or spring. Female alpacas gestate for 11 months.
The Scheers used to breed for quality of fleece and the colors. Now, they just breed to replace attrition in their herd. At six months or 60 pounds, the young alpacas, called crias, are separated from their mothers to be weaned.
There are two breeds of alpacas, the Suri and the Huacaya, based on their fleece fibers rather than scientific classifications.
The Huacaya breed has a smoother, finer fleece, Christine Scheer said, while the Suri’s coat comes in “like dreadlocks.”
In addition to their fleece, the Scheers said their alpacas provide the focus for visits from groups from schools and senior centers.
