We have been considering some Alpacas. We would love to have some but we haven't located any at a reasonable "pet" price. We aren't looking to breed or sell and would just enjoy having them around but the prices.
I know the pain, when we were looking for llamas locally I had almost given up because I was not going to pay the prices that were being asked... I just wanted a generic 'pet' llama that didn't have an attitude, I wasn't interested in quality of wool or if it was papered or whatever... Then one day I was browsing Craigslist and came across an ad for two free llamas, jumped right on it same day and took my daughters out to look at them... I wasn't expecting them to be 'petting zoo' tame but I didn't want them to be aggressive or spit the minute they saw a stranger either... Anyway the two were not the friendliest but they showed no signs of aggression and even showed some signs of being friendly... And for free the price was certainly right...
But, it got better from that point on, apparently the farmer had been liquidating all his animals over the last year and was getting ready to retire... He asked me if I would be interested in 6 'pet' goats that were left over from when he used to breed them, basically all the livestock he had left... He then told me that if I took the goats and llamas he would toss in whatever else he had laying around that he didn't need anymore... Needless to say we took him up on the offer, ended up getting the 6 goats and 2 llamas, as well as about half a dozen tubes of dewormer, some fresh injectable vaccinations, brand new in the box electric sheep shears, a brand new 300 gallon'ish metal stock tank, smaller rubber stock tank, a bunch of heated watering buckets, a bunch of rubber feed buckets, a feed rack, a goat shearing chute and to top it off about 6 months worth of hay!
Anyway instant farm...
Too lazy to find a more recent photo but here is one on the day I brought them home... They are still not entirely friendly but they have never shown any aggression or spit at me, and I can easily get within arms length, they just don't like being touched... But, if I toss a rope around their neck (or halter) they instantly calm down and let me do whatever I need to do, so at least they are not crazy unruly...
