Dea13, let's take this animal husbandry project a couple steps further ...
You cannot purchase top dollar breeding livestock and expect that the progeny from that will also bring top dollar; ie, $150,000 studs don't automatically produce high dollar offspring in the marketplace.
You must go to breed association judged shows to get recognition of your production of animals and fiber. Absent those "best of show" or "best of class" awards, your production is just another also-ran. People who have purchased your livestock or breeding stud fees will have to do the same thing to establish the market value of their herd/production, too.
So, what do those shows cost? Check out the entry fees for the next major national level Alpaca show in Loveland, CO, on
Welcome to Alpaca Breeders of the Rockies. You'll see that it will cost you several hundred dollars to show just a few animals and bags of fleece between entry fees, stall fees, etc.
That doesn't include your vehicle and trailer expenses, road expenses, food & lodging while at the show, insurance costs, show tack & grooming supplies, banners for your stall, or any compensation for your time at the show. Nor does it include any compensation for your time to learn how to show your livestock, or the time it takes to train them for showing.
Nor have we addressed infrastructure costs, feed & supplement costs, meds, and any other essential costs of raising the livestock.
Also, many top livestock producers will pay a professional livestock exhibitor to show their animals for them in the show ring before the judges. There's that much difference between "best of show" and the next places down the ladder when it comes to selling the livestock, and there are "pros" at showing to the judges compared to you.
Let's again look at pacalady's report of income, in some other perspectives.
National alpaca websites assert that a shearing may yield 5-15 lbs of prime fiber per animal. Pacalady says she gets a raw 40 lbs from 15 animals; that's nowhere near the extravagant claims of the websites. In my experience, pacalady's production is more likely the case. After processing, she reports 35 pounds of salable fiber at top dollar.
Let's assume for discussion that pacalady's herd cost an average of only $1,000 per head ... not anywhere close to the $15,000 cost you've quoted for Suri's. With 18 head, that's an investment of $18,000, for a return of less than $2,000.00 on the fiber sales. Using her numbers, that's less than 10% return, and pacalady has not reported her other expenses to create that production which will radically affect that bottom line.
If her prize Alpacas were significantly more in cost than that (like her son of a $150,000 stud), you're now in the realm of a very miniscule return on investment, a fraction of a percent return (if not, in fact, a loss) .... that's not a business, that's a hobby.
Additionally, let's look at the incredulous claim of pacalady that her family put up 48,000 bales of hay in a summer by hand. At typical baling weight, 30 bales/ton (for small squares), that's 1,600 tons of hay. One may safely infer that the hay was cut, raked, and baled by machine ... at 4 tons/acre production (which is alot better than we get), that 400 acres. Even with a truck, low trailer, and a crew ... that's a huge task to accomplish, and it strains credulity that a producer with the equipment to create those 48,000 bales wouldn't use a machine (stack wagon) to efficiently pick them up out of the field to the hay storage area or shipping trailers.
We've cleared a 40 acre field of 2,400 bales with a pick-up truck and a 28' lowboy trailer and a crew of 4 hands tossing and stacking the hay, and then unloading it at our hay stack 3/4 mile away. It took almost two days to do this. 48,000 bales would take well over a month to do the same; with all the other farm and ranch chores pacalady talks about (cattle, etc), it would be hard to spare that much labor & time to do this repetitive task when a machine could do it in a few days.
I don't own a stack wagon (although I do own all the rest of the hay forage equipment), and can readily justify paying a neighbor to come clear and stack my fields a twenty-five cents per bale as a cost of my finished product. Even at labor ready rates ($12.53/hour), the wages to move and stack hay simply don't make sense with a crew of 4 and myself to run my pick-up truck. The stack wagon moves 160 bales per load and can do several loads per hour.
Dea13, just trying to show you what happens in the real world when I'm not trying to create value in your mind re $15,000 to $150,000 livestock as a viable business ....
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HHMMM this might start getting interesting!!! Group hug everyone 
clairmont
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