Hidden Brook Ranch LLC

Today I'm talking with Christine at Hidden Brook Ranch LLC. You can also follow on Facebook. 

If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee 

https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes

00:00
This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Christine at Hidden Brook Ranch LLC. Good morning, Christine. How are you? I'm good, Mary. How are you? I'm great. You're in New Jersey? Yes, we are. We're in Blairstown, New Jersey, which is Warren County.

00:27
Okay, I've said this before on the podcast, so I'm gonna say it again. I was born in New Jersey, but my parents moved to Maine when I was six months old. Oh, nice. What part of New Jersey? Um, I don't, I don't know for sure. It was the Fort Dix Air Force Base. Oh, okay. Got it. That's like South Jersey. So I think the town or the city is Burlington, but I'm not positive. Got it. Yeah.

00:58
small little state, the garden state. But yeah. Yeah, exactly. All right, so tell me about yourself and what you do. So my husband and I own an alpaca ranch. We produce fiber producing alpacas, as well as conduct a agro tourism business, where we get to educate people on alpacas and llamas, because we do have some llamas as well. About...

01:27
their care and their habits and how we use the fiber to produce products. Yes. Okay. Do alpacas and llamas get along? Is that why people who have one usually have some of the other? Well, typically, yes, because alpacas and llamas are both part of the camel lid family. And I say that kind of, it's kind of odd.

01:56
Most alpaca owners don't like llamas. Most llama owners don't like alpacas. So it's almost rare, actually, to find someone who has both. But we find that it's nice to have both, because we also use our llamas for protection. So our llamas guard the alpacas. Oh, OK. So I know that llamas and alpacas are different.

02:26
Alpacas you can use their fur hair or whatever it's called for for fiber for yarn or I don't even know but llamas not so much, right?

02:40
So alpacas, the fiber is definitely better than a llama's fiber, but llama's fiber can be utilized. It just tends to be a bit more coarse. So if you're making something to like a wearable, you would make something that is not going to be close to the skin.

03:08
All right, that makes sense. So it's kind of the difference between wool and man-made yarn because wool tends to be itchy depending on the breed of sheep. Yes. Yeah. So yeah, definitely. Cool. So how did you get into this? So we started about 2019. We were looking for a piece of property where, you know, we could

03:38
not necessarily farm because farming wasn't our thing, but raise some animals, you know, to produce something because New Jersey's very expensive. So having a farm and producing a product from your farm helps you tax for tax purpose. So we were looking for something that would be at least five acres.

04:07
and have some ability or capability to raise some sort of animals. So we found this piece of property that right backs up to Jenny Jump State Park which is a really big park here in New Jersey and it fit all the check marks. The check marks were all checked off and they happen to have been already

04:37
for alpaca. And we tried to learn as much as we could and we decided that we were going to keep the four alpaca that the previous owners had and our one llama at that time, Stella, and raise alpaca. So that was the plan. That's how we kind of started. And then COVID came.

05:06
So COVID kind of gave us the opportunity to get to know our land and our animals more. And I always tell people alpaca are kind of like tattoos. Once you get one, you kind of end up getting more. So we kind of dove into learning as much as we could about their care and then decided that we wanted a couple of more. So

05:35
We bred initially because we knew what the result of a previous breeding with those two alpacas would be. And now we're, you know, producing show quality fiber alpacas. Yeah, so it was almost a mishap, you know, well, maybe not a mishap, but definitely something unexpected.

06:05
You know, initially, as far as animals, we would get a property we could have horses on. But we just kind of fell in love with the animals, the alpacas and the llamas. So that's how it started. So when you bred that that pair and you had that first alpaca baby and is there a name for a baby alpaca? Yeah. So baby alpacas are called creas. That's what I thought. Yeah, it's one.

06:33
Pretty is names for a baby animal I've ever heard. Yeah. Were you just like in love with this new baby? Oh my God. Yes, she was adorable. So alpacas are very interesting animals and especially when the female is bred. You know, I think she knows you're watching to see when her baby's going to be born. So they tend to try to have a baby when no one else is around. And yeah, of course.

07:02
my husband was home and I was the one with all the birthing and reproductive knowledge because I had Decided I was going to take a course from a very well-known vet on reproduction and birthing and I was not home. I missed the entire birth. Oh, but it was captured on a fantastic video for me and Yeah, she it was just it was amazing

07:32
So the birds though tend to make me a little bit nervous, but generally we've been pretty successful at that now. So we have three currently who are gonna give birth next year. Fun, fun. Yeah, birth is always a scary time and it doesn't matter whether it's a human or an animal because things go wrong. Yeah. Yeah, there's lots of signs for them.

08:02
But yeah, I can remember being pregnant with my last kid. And I waited a very long time to go in because I knew that if I went in too early, I was just gonna be stuck and I could do most of the laboring at home. And I got to the hospital at 10 minutes to seven in the evening and he was born at 712. So 22 minutes later. Wow, yeah, that's kinda close.

08:29
Yeah, and I can remember saying to him on the drive up to the hospital that if anything went wrong and it was a choice between me and the baby, choose me because I already had three other kids that needed me. And he looked at me and he was like, are you sure? And I said, well, do you want to be raising three kids and a newborn by yourself? Right. And he said, not especially. And I said, okay, if the choice needs to be made, that's the smart choice.

08:58
And he was like, you sound very sure. I said, I am very sure. And he said, okay. Luckily, Cameron, the youngest, was born really easily, like no epidural, no nothing. Everything was textbook and he was perfect. So it all went well. But when people tell me they're expecting, my first thought is that's exciting, congratulations. But in the back of my head, I'm like, I hope everything goes safely and well.

09:28
Yes, very true. And it's true of animals too. We've had a barn cat have three sets of babies in the last year. And every time we realize she's pregnant, I'm like, huh, I wonder how many of these are going to make it.

09:42
True, very true. Yeah. So I'm going to be a nervous wreck next May. Yeah. It's really hard because you want everything to be okay. You want mom to be okay. You want the babies to be okay. Speaking of babies, do they have just one or can they have twins? They typically just have one. So twin birds are successful twin birds of alpacas are becoming, I'd say maybe slightly more common.

10:11
Um, that those are successful. Um, but you know, a few years ago, you know, none of them were surviving, you know, um, none of them were making it out. So, um, I think people, um, camelid special with camelid specialties, like veterinarians with camelid specialties, um, are a little bit more equipped now to handle those twin birds and, um.

10:40
They seem to be more successful, so that's good. But for me, I'm just hoping for one good healthy. Yeah, I just didn't know if they were like goats, because goats have twins and triplets, and sometimes quadruplets. Oh, yeah, no, no, no. Thankfully, no. OK, good. I don't know if I could handle that. Yeah, so OK, so alpacas, they are camelids, which means they're related to camels. Yes.

11:08
Are there other animals besides llamas and alpacas that are related to animals or is that it? So alpacas were domesticated by the Inca and they were domesticated from the Vaikuna. Okay. And the llamas were domesticated as working animals and they came from the Guanaco. So all of those are found in the

11:38
the Andes, so mostly Peru, where they have like six billion. And Bolivia has alpacas and guanacos and vicuña. But yeah, that's what they came from. And they had similar purposes then than they do today. So it's very kind of interesting.

12:01
Alrighty see I know nothing about alpacas when I realized that's what you did. I was like yay something I know nothing about I get to get educated today So I know that people will drink camel milk Is there anything that the alpaca milk is good for besides feeding the baby alpaca? No No, so they only Supply enough milk to feed their baby Okay

12:30
Yeah, so unfortunately not. Yeah, you can't drink it. So you can't make soap with it. Can't do any of those things you could do with like goat milk. And it's the same for llamas. We have not bred llamas, though, because if you do use llamas for guarding purpose, it's best that they've not either, you know, been a mom or

13:00
for males they need to be gilded. Yeah. Okay. So I don't want to ask an offensive or gross question, but people eat sheep's meat, they eat goat meat, do people eat alpaca meat? People do eat alpaca and llama.

13:24
Some farms, I'd say in the US, have a meat component to their farming plan. Here we do not eat the meat. But yes, it is certainly in Peru acceptable to eat both alpaca and llama meat.

13:49
Okay, like I said, I know nothing about this. I'm going to ask all the questions. Yeah. Okay, so how many alpacas do you have right now? So we have currently 20 alpacas, three separate herds. We have a female herd that all live together, and then we have two separate male herds. We have an adult male herd, and we have our juvenile male herd.

14:19
Um, yeah. So the juvenile male herd, um, consists of our babies from last year. So, um, we had two males born last year and one female. So the males and the females have to be separated, um, from each other. Typically about eight months, really depending on their, their activities. Yes.

14:46
Um, but yeah, our males were separated by eight months and they also need to be, uh, to be secure in a herd. Um, they need to be in groups of three. So we only had two males last year. So, um, we ended up getting two more juvenile males so that, uh, they could be more comfortable and less stressed because they stress a little bit. So you got them some buddies. Good.

15:15
Yeah, they got some cute little buddies and it's nice because they are rotational sleepers. So alpacas are pretty much defenseless animals, which is why we have llamas, but they're rotational sleepers. So one is always up kind of keeping an eye on things while the others are sleeping. So if you have only two, they're not really well rested, right? Yeah.

15:45
That's a good size, but they unfortunately cannot be co-mingled with the adult males. Yet, it might take a little while to get that situation worked out because, you know, the adult males have a hierarchy and the little males don't fit into that picture right now. So they would fight a lot. Yeah. So why are alpacas defenseless, but llamas are really good defense animals?

16:15
So, the opacas, their defense really is just to flee. So they don't really have the ability to bite. They have a split upper lip with a palate, and then they have bottom teeth. So they can't really get a good grip in that kind of situation. They do have...

16:43
toes with pads, but you know, they're not really strong. So their legs are very long and they're not really very muscular. So I don't know if they have the strength to defend, which is why they flee. But llamas are very big. So llamas tend to be upwards of 300 pounds, where your average alpaca is about 150. Oh. Yeah. And llamas, they're

17:13
They say llamas defend to the death. So llamas instinctually just know that this is my job, especially if you get good llama guard stock. You want to look for llamas from proven guard stock. So what they do is they will charge a predator, they'll grab it with its front legs, and they'll pull it underneath its body, and then they'll pound it with the back legs.

17:43
Um, and you ever get kicked by a llama, it's not fun. So, um, generally that's how they eliminate predators while alpacas are just going to run around screaming, you know, looking for a place to go. And obviously since, you know, they're here on our farm, they don't really have very many places that are not fenced to get away from a predator. Right. Yeah. So, so llamas are fighters and alpacas are lovers.

18:12
Yes, uh-huh. Yes. Well, they might fight amongst themselves a little bit here and there, but generally they're very peaceful and calm animals. So, cool. So did I see something about alpaca yoga on your face? Tell me about that. That's a lot of fun. So, you know, goat yoga is a big thing. People love to go

18:42
do goat yoga and I was like, why don't we do alpaca yoga? And it's nice because with goats, they go to the bathroom all over the place. They don't have a problem, you know, stopping right where you're sitting. Where alpacas are communal. So they all go in like generally the same area.

19:06
So it's nice for yoga because we could keep them interacting as they're grazing or maybe eating a little bit of grain from your hand. But generally they just graze around you while you're doing the yoga. So there's no jumping on anybody's back. My llama actually really loves yoga. He will lie down and eat grass right next to you. It's very, very cute. And I think too, like alpacas...

19:35
Like most animals are, um...

19:41
They feed off your energy, right? So yoga is peaceful and calm generally, right? And you're in this mindset of peace and calmness that really the alpacas enjoy. So it's a nice combination and no one's jumping on your back, so that's good. Uh-huh, yeah, I can't imagine 150 pounds on my back when I'm trying to do a yoga pose. That would probably not be good. No.

20:09
Okay, so I have two questions. They'll probably eat up the 10 minutes left of 30 minutes One of them is are alpacas an easy keeper animal the other question I want to know about your agritourism because that's a big deal for a lot of people right now. Yes. Okay, so We always tell people alpacas are like cats. In fact, I've kind of coined them as pasture cats where cats are kind of okay, you just

20:38
clean up after them, give them some food and some water, and generally that's it. There is more to it depending on what area of the country you live in. So here we're in white tail deer area, so we have to worry about meningeal worm, so that adds a little bit of extra care for alpacas. So for us, daily care, we primarily feed them

21:07
grains twice a day. So once in the morning, once in the afternoon, and then we clean up their... my alpacas are on dry lot. I think that that helps to reduce their exposure to parasites. And then we only graze them for... well we rotational... rotationally graze them, but we only allow them to graze when the grass is dry.

21:36
that helps also to reduce parasites. But once a month they all have to be weighed. So we have to harness everybody. We have to get them on a scale, which is a lot of fun. The more you do it regularly, they're more used to it. We weigh them and then we give them a shot of ivermectin. And ivermectin is to prevent parasites, right? Sweet.

22:01
Basically, you're treating them all year long like they have parasites, even though they may or may not. But we like to keep things really clean. So because I'm a little crazy about that. That's okay. So yeah, my first, the fall season drives me nuts because of the little leaves.

22:27
The leaves are just falling from the trees, they're wet, you never know, they might have a slug on the back of them. You know, one eats a slug and the next thing you know, they're sick. So we also do FAMACHA body scoring, which a lot of people with sheep or goat would be familiar with, but we're generally checking their, popping their eye to check the membrane.

22:53
to check the color of the membrane, to see if there's any signs of illness. We also body score them, so we weigh them and then we get our hands on them. And we will check to see whether they're maybe eating too much, because we do have an agrotourism business. So people do come and they do get to feed the alpacas, and the llamas actually.

23:22
So we'll check their body score to see if they're too heavy or maybe too thin. You know, because if they're thin, then we want to bulk them up a bit because the one thing about camel lids, especially alpacas, is that they do get sick and when they do get sick, they go down very quickly and they can lose weight very rapidly.

23:45
So we like to be on top of that by maybe keeping a little bit of extra weight on them so that we do have a chance to get them back to a healthier weight sooner if they're not already skinny. The other thing is we're really careful about what we feed them because they are borderline diabetics by nature. So we don't.

24:13
like to give them anything that's like molasses based. We also don't like to give them any cracked corn because a lot of people like to feed cracked corn. The cracked corn could cause dental issues for them. They don't do very well under anesthetic. So we wouldn't want to have to do any major dental work should they break a tooth or a molar.

24:43
due to crack corn. So that's generally their

24:53
their maintenance schedule, but we also have to shear them once a year. For us, we prefer to have a shearer come and do it rather than attempt to shear on our own. We prefer to let professional shearers handle that. At the time of shearing, they will trim the toenails. They'll check the teeth. They'll trim the teeth if need be.

25:23
And the males, because Lord knows why, but the males have extra teeth in their mouth that the females don't have, which are called fighting teeth. So those fighting teeth, the points have to be taken off, but they can grow back. So we check them from time to time to make sure the males don't grow new fighting teeth. But that's pretty much their care in a nutshell. And then your other question, the agrotourism.

25:53
Yeah. So we decided during COVID, since everybody was pretty cooped up and we're pretty close to the city, that we were going to provide an educational but fun experience for people to come to that was outdoors. Because you know, you couldn't really do anything at the time that was indoors.

26:22
Yeah.

26:26
We decided to start, well, I found Airbnb experience. Unfortunately, I don't think Airbnb is now hosting new experiences, but that was the platform we chose to book through initially. And what would happen is if somebody went on vacation and stayed at an Airbnb locally, they would be suggested to come here.

26:57
as one of the things to do. And since there were very limited things to do, we were quite successful with Airbnb initially. And now we primarily generate visits on our own through our own marketing efforts and our own booking platform. So we've moved to that, but it's fun. So what we do is we have a few different types of visits. You know, you mentioned the alpaca yoga, that's...

27:25
One of the things we do like an evening event where people come and we have a little campfire going and they get to see the alpacas in the dark, which is kind of cool, because they actually feel different at night than they do during the day. I don't know why. It's just very weird. We make s'mores and hang out and tell stories about the alpacas. And that's a lot of fun, but generally we do guided walking tours.

27:53
where we are allowing people to come in, meet, greet, feed, and feel, learn about alpacas and llamas, and then we take them on a guided walk. You know, we're, we keep that to a minimum. We don't like to have too many people, and we don't like to have too many availability, because you know, we don't want them to.

28:22
be stressed with visitors all the time too. So you have to balance the business side of it because that's what provides the funds to care for the animals properly. And not having them be overworked or having too many visitors because that could be detrimental to their health because they would be very stressed out.

28:50
So we limit our groups to like 10 and we space it out so that the alpacas are getting a rest in between. And we don't really force the interaction. We know which ones will walk, which ones like to go on a little dotted walk and which ones are like, no, not me. We also don't force them to eat.

29:18
It's totally up to them if they want to engage with the people while they're here then They'll come on over and if they don't then you know, we just let them hang out and observe So we try to keep it nice and calm for them too. So That's a nice vibe. So basically you don't want the alpacas to get overwhelmed is what you're saying Yes stresses them out. Okay. Yeah. All right, and then my last question

29:47
because we're almost at 30 minutes, is do you ever get tired of talking about alpacas? Are you just so in love with what you're doing that you're like, I can talk about it 24 hours a day, seven days a week? I don't get tired of talking about alpacas. No, I don't. They are so cute. If you have alpacas...

30:14
and you treat them well, they treat you well, and it is just such a joy. You know, we just, they know their names, they come when I call them, they give me little kisses on my chin. So, I mean, they're really cute. And I think for us specifically, like we don't mind talking about alpacas nonstop, especially if people have questions because...

30:41
I think it's important for people who are considering alpacas to have the knowledge and not just like go buy one or go buy a bottle baby or you know, that kind of thing. So we'd like to educate people, I think so. I mean, that's primarily what we do when we're talking about alpacas is giving them information they didn't have.

31:11
Very nice and part of the reason I started the podcast is because I was like there are so many people interested in starting homesteads or farms and there's so much to it that people don't know. And I thought, huh, maybe I can find some people to talk to me about what's actually involved. And, huh, talked to over a hundred, actually probably 200 people at this point. Wow, that's fantastic.

31:38
Yes, and I've had people come up to me and my husband and say, I love the podcast. I have learned so many things from it. And every time somebody says that, I'm just like, yay, it's doing its job. Good. Oh, that's great. Yeah. Now it's nice to have that feeling. Yeah. People want to know. People are inherently curious about what other people are doing. It's just the human condition, I think. So.

32:04
All right, so Christine, thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate it and thank you for teaching me all about alpacas. Oh, thank you, Mary. You have a good day. You too. Bye. All right.