| Our "Alpaca Adventure" is really my doing. I grew up in Virginia, surrounded by animals and loved every minute of it. As a kid, I had every animal imaginable from hamsters to an alligator so the progression to alpacas was never a huge leap. Eventually, I moved to Sarasota Florida in my early twenties. After only a couple days in Florida I found myself in a bird store trying to buy a bird from this gorgeous guy working there. It turns out that the bird I wanted wasn't for sale, just boarding there, but all wasn't lost... I ended up marrying the guy I tried to buy the bird from! Here we are sixteen years later, living in VA with two beautiful teenage daughters, a huge dog named Zoe, a rescued dog named Zina, a calico cat named Grafetti, too many Muscovy ducks too count, and our wonderful fuzzy faced alpacas. I don't actually remember the first time I saw an alpaca, I believe it was at a fair years ago. In the Spring of 2003, I actually put my hands on an alpaca for the first time. If you have never touched an alpaca fleece you are missing something special. It's so soft, dense, and fluffy all at the same time. You just want to lay your face up against them and go to sleep. I began a time consuming search on the internet of everything I could find related to alpacas. There's a ton of websites out there available to a newbie.You can find some good websites on my links page. I found some farms in my area about an hour away and emailed them. They invited me out, gave me a tour, introduced their alpacas, and invited us to come back anytime. I was hooked. After several farm visits, more research, buying books, etc. I started visiting farms for herd health day so I could learn to trim their nails, give wormers, and shots. Most farms I talked to were more than willing to have a few helping hands for this sort of thing. After all the searching, learning, and looking, we purchased our first female alpaca. Within a few weeks the second female was ours along with her male cria. I'm no longer hooked on alpacas - I'm addicted! To me, they are like taking two tylenol after a stressful day. They're relaxing, peaceful, and funny to watch. They each have different personalities and behaviors. They make it incredibly difficult not to smile even while picking up alpaca poo. There's nothing more relaxing then watching the alpacas play in the evening. Grab the lawn chair and the camera! Our fascination with alpaca fiber began the minute I got my hands on some but once you work with it and see the outcome there's no going back! We are now fiber fanatics! We've taught oursleves (and many others) as much as possible about the fiber we love. We currently use wet felting, needle felting, knitting, and crochet to make our products from the alpaca fleece. We would like to have all of our products created ~start to finish~ right here on our farm. We now even spin our own yarn from our alpaca fleece. You can follow our alpaca lifestyle and fiber fun by checking out our blog. |
| After reading how we got started with alpacas you can check out our Blog to catch a glimpse into the alpaca lifestyle. |
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| Mada Vemi Alpacas Dawn Dolpp 125 Tommy Carter Rd. Axton, VA 24054 Dawn@madavemialpacas.com 804-365-7949 434-770-1972 |