Those of you familiar with the NWA web site may already have seen Mike Safleys latest article on the art of buying Very Pregnant Female alpacas. For those of you who haven't seen the article here is a brief summary. Its one of the best articles I have read in a good while and is great buying advice for anyone getting into the alpaca business. In fact I would say its in my Top Ten Tricks of the Trade.

Mike is often asked which alpacas are the best value.

His answer is simple; very pregnant females, the more pregnant the better.
His father and he built their herd by selecting very pregnant females beginning in 1984.

In those days no one was ultra sounding females but you could feel the body parts in a later term pregnancy. Mike would stand behind the dam and rub her belly, if he felt a body part they knew the female was due in less than 60 days.

Eric Hoffman was the head salesman for the importers in the late eighties and he held an import sale at his ranch in Santa Cruz, California. Eric controlled most of the market in those days and he had the biggest group of females for sale outside of South America. The sale format reflected his control, you needed an appointment to even go to the sale and he only allowed prospective purchasers 30 minutes to select their alpacas.

Mike and his father arrived at the appointed hour and waded into the available females. His father would hold the head and he would slip up behind them and massage the momma's belly. If he could feel a body part they bought the alpaca.

They purchased 7 females that day and they all had cria within 60 days. Lo and behold each was a female cria. But that was just beginners luck.....or was it ?

For anyone who wants to make a high value alpaca purchase, pregnant females are the best choice for several reasons:

1) They have a proven ability to conceive.
2) The shorter the due date, the higher the value of the Dam.
3) Pregnant females will have two or three cria before a six month old female cria might have one cria.

Now as Mike says this was in the days before ultrasound so being about to "guesstimate" when a dam was due to deliver was a very useful skill. None the less everything else Mike says is good advice.

Click here to see a very pregnant female that's available until May 15th 2007.

Adrian Stewart - click here to go to Mulberry Alpacas.

Click here to register for the Mulberry Alpacas Newsletter.

Click here to go to the article written by Mike.