Our History
A friend of mine said that my writing about all of us here at LightHeart Ranch had to focus on our unique qualities. Those things that made us different from any other alpaca ranch. Well that got me to thinking about what it is that makes unique.
Let’s see, We are a family run business. I live on the ranch with my father and mother. My sister and brother-in-Law live close by. Well, that’s not so unusual. Many alpaca ranches are family operations since this occupation is great for both children and adults. It offers people the chance to spend more time with their families working together toward a common goal.
I found alpacas 6 years ago when I found myself stuck in an office job in Los Angeles and knew I had to find a way out. Alpacas offered me the opportunity to work for myself and work outside in the country. It was what I really wanted my life to be. Again, not unique, many alpaca breeders found the alpaca lifestyle preferable to office work or the 9to5 grind.
I started out with just 2 alpacas, which I financed through the breeder I bought them from and now I have a herd of 45 wonderful huacayas. Well, lots and lots of breeders started small and worked they way up to better and better animals through the best breeding choices they could make. That only makes me as unique as about 500 other breeders who have done the exact same thing. LightHeart, like most other breeders also does its own financing for most purchases.
In the past 6 years I have worked with some of the best people in the industry and have had good mentoring and support from the alpaca community. Also, not unusual. I find that folks in the alpaca industry are, for the most part, always willing to share information and help whenever they can. The national organization, AOBA, is very well organized and shares the same dream as each breeder, to make alpacas a household word and encourage the growth of the end product fiber industry so that the alpaca investment remains the stable and profitable investment it has been for the past twenty years.
We use scientific methods for measuring fleece quality and follicle counts so that we can continue to breed better quality alpacas with each generation. These methods are available to everyone in the industry and many take advantage of them because we have the same end goal. All breeders want alpaca to be the natural luxury fiber that everyone wants and all alpaca breeders want to produce enough of it to satisfy that desire. So we use the best tools that animal science has to offer to improve the density and fineness of each fleece.
We grow our own orchard grass to feed our alpacas. A little unique perhaps, but we are not the only breeders who do that. Our region here is great for agriculture and the ranch is surrounded by fields of corn and orchards of terrific apples, plums and pears. There are folks growing pumpkins, cotton and watermelons. Growing our own feed does lower our operating costs so we can offer a great boarding rate to our clients. I guess that does make us a bit unusual.
I guess our most unique aspect is our location. Willcox is a lovely little town in Southeastern Arizona where we have great air, clean water, temperate climate because of the altitude of 4200 feet above sea level and the wildest sunsets in the entire U.S.A. We also have the most wonderful migration of cranes each January. The sky is filled with wings as they move through and feed before flying on to their next stop.
In looking for those qualities that make this ranch unique it was mentioned that I should say that our alpacas are lovingly tended by black forest elves under the guidance of Rumplestilskin or that Butch Cassidy and the Sundance kid (who robbed their first train near here) brought alpacas to Willcox when they came back from Bolivia but Rumplestilkin was busy and I couldn’t find any black forest elves and I couldn’t verify the whole Butch-Sundance thing. So I guess all I can really say is that LightHeart Ranch Alpacas is a place where we try to breed the best alpacas in an atmosphere of love, respect and peace. Really what that makes us is just the same as so many other great alpaca breeders all doing their best to try and make alpacas and alpaca fiber the household word for luxury, comfort and beauty. Come by and visit us and we’ll introduce you to the incredibly wonderful alpaca.
Linda Snook 2007
Shamrock
