Thousands of miles from their native Andes, alpacas have made a new home in the Helderbergs.

Hearty by nature, alpacas are relatively low-maintenance barnyard animals, say local breeders, and the fleece they grow is comparable to cashmere.
"If this Bronx boy can do it, anybody can," Jerry Weisgrau of Staghorn Valley Alpacas tells people who are interested in raising their own.

He and his companion moved from Albany to a house out in the country, he said, and they bought the alpacas before they purchased the farm.
In 1999, the couple started with seven alpacas, which they boarded until they had their own land. As soon as they saw the furry creatures, "We were hooked," Weisgrau said.

Brenda Truss, another local alpaca farmer, had a similar experience, but she already had the land.
"We had the land and wanted to farm something," she said, and, eight years ago, her husband saw a show about alpacas on the Discovery Channel.

Truss soon quit her office job and started farming alpacas full-time; after four years of breeding alpacas, she was making $78,000, she said. Truss keeps her herd around 20 and sells her show-quality alpacas.

In order to enter most shows, alpacas must be registered with Alpaca Registry, Inc., which both Weisgrau and Truss likened to the American Kennel Club. Since the registry closed to newly imported alpacas in 1998, the ones that have been bred in the United States have been providing finer fleece, Truss said.
"You always want to breed up," she said of why the quality of alpaca wool has gone up. Breeders mate their females with the best quality males that they can, she said, so the wool that comes from the offspring gets better and better.
"The national herd now grows through breeding," Weisgrau said, adding that a good, pregnant female can fetch $15,000 to $30,000 and a high-quality stud can sell for $300,000. Fees for mating a female with a good stud are usually about $5,000, Truss said.

Demand for alpacas’ fleece grows every year, Weisgrau said. It’s considered a luxury fiber, he said; in fact, Sherman Adams, who served as former President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s chief of staff, had to resign after it was discovered that he accepted a coat made of alpaca wool since it was so valuable, Weisgrau said. Now, alpaca wool usually sells for $7 an ounce and $3 an ounce for fleece, he said.

The fleece comes in varying shades of brown, white, gray, and black, and, on both farms, each alpaca has a name.
Truss uses the names of deceased family members, "Like my mom," she said, adding, "I sold."
At Staghorn Valley, the names "kind of just come to us," said Judy Phaff. With a Bailey’s Irish Cream, Cognac, and Brandy — who was recently sold — running around the farm, Weisgrau laughed as he said, "You know what our pastimes are around here."