Hughes Haven
Our Beginning
We had bought some land and didn’t really have a purpose for it. One Saturday as we were driving down I-80 just east of Lexington, Udell looked over at the alpacas and llamas in the field and said maybe we should get some alpacas and start a fiber business. Not having an Ag background, I agreed to explore the idea without committing. Over the next couple of months we visited an alpaca farm in Scottsbluff, went to an alpaca show in Loveland and connected with alpaca groups on Facebook. I asked tons of questions and read all the literature I could find in an effort to educate myself on these animals while Udell studied barn and pasture layouts. Our plan was to run electricity to the property, build a house, get our barn and pastures done, and then acquires our alpacas, sometime around the time we were ready to retire. We thought we had 5 to 10 years to get everything in place.
However, in January of 2016 as we sat drinking coffee and reading the Telegraph, Udell spotted an ad for 6 alpacas. He asked if I wanted to go see them and because I have no self-preservation, I said yes. The directions we got sent us out in the middle of nowhere, down a dirt road to an old farmhouse. Mr. Trumbull explained that he and his wife had been on the ranch for 59 years, but due to health they were moving to town and he needed to find a home for his alpacas.
As we followed him to the pen I was expecting the cute, fuzzy alpacas we had seen in our research. Instead, there before us was the most ragtag overgrown animals I had ever seen. When I asked where he got them, he said he picked three up at an auction, then went back later and got three more. He said he had never had them sheared, they had never had shelter and he really didn’t do anything with them. They just lived out with the cows and he hadn’t lost a calf to coyotes in the six years since he had got them. They didn’t even have names.
Listening to him, I could tell he was fond of them, but I was choked with disappointment. They were nothing close to what I was expecting and to top it off, I was pretty sure they weren’t full blooded alpacas, rather a cross between an alpaca and a llama (called a huarizo).
He told us three other people had been out to see them but weren’t interested. As I watched them, trying to figure out a way to walk away without disappointing Mr. Trumbull, my gaze met Willow’s. There she stood, overgrown, but somehow proud. There was such wisdom in her dark eyes, such gentleness in her face that I instantly fell in love. It was that easy. I handed him the fifty dollars for all of them and told him we would take them. Hiding his surprise, Udell made arrangements to pick them up the next week.
Thus began our adventure.
Because all we had was 80 acres of fenced pasture and a windmill, the next week getting ready for them was a little frantic. Mr. Trumbull assured us they would be fine as long as we had grass and water but I had done the research so thought they needed shelter and a pen. Since we couldn’t get a shelter up that fast, Udell donated his car trailer to the cause and put up a pen with six foot fence in frozen ground.
Being in the middle of cow country has been a curse and a blessing. The feed I had researched wasn’t readily available, no local veterinarians had camelid experience, and we didn’t have a mentor to guide us, but we had made a commitment so dug in and began asking questions. We went to the local feed store, where the manager helped us research their nutritional needs, set us up with hay and gave us confidence that we could do this. Both Udell and I work at First National Bank, so I went to the professionals, our Ag lenders. Because we didn’t have background in ag, I asked questions about everything, vaccinations, shearers, hay quality, recommendations for vets. They would tell me what should be done for a cow, then I would research how that related to camelids.
There were times I would go to bed, scared I had missed something, I hadn’t asked the right question, and that somehow our herd would know we were lacking. But the next morning the alarm would go off and I would crawl eagerly out of bed, ready to head to the farm.
Two days after bringing them home, we had our first blizzard since 2009. As we headed out to the farm, we bucked drifts on a road that was only a memory. Once at the farm, we found the pass drifted shut. Unable to drive to the pen, we carried hay bales a quarter mile across country to feed. When we finally got to them, they looked at us like we were crazy. Jolie, Jasper, Journey and Willow had found the car trailer and were snug as bugs, munching on a hay bale. Walter and Rudi who had never had shelter were cushed down out of the wind by the trailer, seemingly comfortable.
I remember looking at Udell and asking him if he was ready to divorce me yet since I had gotten us into this adventure. He just shook his head, laughed and said not yet.
Over the course of the next few months, we managed to get a shelter, found a vet clinic willing to work with camelids and got more comfortable with our herd. More importantly, we found we were enjoying every day. Suddenly there was more to our day than work and bills. We would go home, pick up the dogs and head out to the farm where we were greeted with mixed emotions.
We had not planned on getting more animals until we were living on the farm but Udell discovered Craigslist. There were two fiber boy alpacas in Tobias NE needing a home. Udell convinced me that we should at least check them out. By this time we had determined that our herd was indeed llamas and we still were determined to have an alpaca herd so off we went.
A couple of weeks later, Udell found more alpacas for sale in Brighton CO. The ad said they were between 2-6 years old which sounded perfect for what we were wanting, so we were on the road again. When we arrived, it became apparent the animals were starving and neglected. In talking to the kids who had them, their grandfather had died, so these kids were trying to sell his alpacas and were expecting to be able to make money on them. However, the market was saturated and no one was willing to pay the outrageous price they thought they could get. Wishing we had money and room in the trailer for all of them, we bought 8.
After arriving home, we soon realized how starved and neglected they were. Keegan would eat and immediately lay down, too weak to stand. Tia’s teeth were two inches long and all their toenails were overgrown. They were also a lot older than the ad had said. But it didn’t matter to us; because of course I had fallen in love with them and so began Hughes Haven.
While we still dreamed of having a fiber operation, we found we were acquiring more rescue than registered animals. Today, we have 27 alpacas and 32 llamas. Some came to us because their family could not take care of them, some came abused, others just unwanted, all of them a gift.