What color eggs do they lay?

What do you do with their “fur”?

Do they change colors?

My llama packs way more than that little alpaca!

I heard they spit at everyone that comes near them. That’s gross!

They cost HOW MUCH???  That’s outrageous!

We could go on and on. The fact is, we thought we’d heard it all after our first year in business. But the comments just keep us shaking our heads. Tahoe Breeze Alpacas hosts visitors on almost a daily basis. These comments and questions for the most part are completely serious, and all of them receive a courteous and hopefully informed response from us. After all. if the visitor knew the answer, they in all likelihood would not have asked the question.

The alpaca business, for all of it’s highly touted shows and it’s glitzy, glossy, high dollar internal publicity, is in it’s infancy. We as a group are very accomplished at “preaching to the choir”. The general public in North America is still for the most part, totally unaware of the existence of alpacas at all! Any alpaca breeders that have participated in public events such as main street parades, county fairs or craft shows have all heard this one…look kids, mini-lamas! Now, I’m not talking about the “Farm Day” show that we, or other breeders periodically host, or the “open house”, or the “shearing day”, where anyone in attendance has probably at least heard of an alpaca. I’m talking about the general gatherings at which the public did not show up to specifically look at an alpaca.

Here’s my point. The egg question is easy. So is the pack animal question. Even the spitting issue is relatively easy to address. But, if we only respond to the simple questions we are going nowhere as an industry. The alpaca breeders on this continent must educate themselves, and in turn, they must learn how to successfully educate a curious public. There is an entire segment of the North American population that would truly love to own alpacas but this population is not going to beat a path to our door.  It is our job as breeders to seek them out and show them why they should own alpacas. In fact, at Tahoe Breeze Alpacas it’s part of our mission.

In order to convince this curious and uninformed public, we must learn how to effectively answer all of their questions. Any alpaca breeder can answer the “egg” question (hopefully). In order to answer the hard questions, the successful alpaca breeder must have a complete grasp of all aspects of the business, including fleece, confirmation, breeding, and market value. In my opinion the number one rule of a successful salesman is: KNOW YOUR PRODUCT! According to the Alpaca Owners and Breeder’s Association, our industry as a whole has room for a great deal of improvement in the area of “customer service”. Again, I don’t believe we can be serious about customer service unless we KNOW OUR PRODUCT!

So go ahead, ask away. At Tahoe Breeze Alpacas, the only dumb question is the one you don’t ask. If we don’t know the answer, we’ll get the answer. It’s that simple.

For our next segment we’re going to address one of those “hard” questions. Can you guess which one?  

In order to answer this question, please consider the following: There are approximately 8 million horses on this continent. There are approximately 3 million horse owners as well. The horse industry's contribution to the U.S. GDP is greater than the motion picture services, railroad transportation, furniture and fixtures manufacturing and tobacco product manufacturing industries. It is only slightly smaller than the apparel and other textile products manufacturing industry. Racing, showing and recreation combine to contribute more than 75% of the total value of goods and services produced by the horse industry.

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