Mentorship That Matters

No matter where you are in your alpaca journey - considering your first alpacas, building a breeding program, preparing for the show ring, or simply facing a challenge you haven’t encountered before - Elderwood Farms is here to help.

Our approach to mentorship combines hands-on experience, continued education, and lessons learned over more than a decade of alpaca ownership. We don’t pretend to have every answer, but we’re happy to share what we’ve learned, help you work through questions, and point you toward trusted professionals and resources when appropriate.

Mentorship isn’t limited to alpacas purchased from Elderwood. We believe a knowledgeable, supported alpaca community is better for everyone - especially the animals.

How We Can Help

Every farm is different, so mentorship doesn’t have to follow a set curriculum. Questions can be as simple as preparing for your first alpacas or as specific as evaluating a breeding decision.

Areas where we regularly share experience include:

• Alpaca Husbandry & Farm Management: daily care, pasture and shelter considerations, herd management, handling, and farm setup
• Health, Nutrition & Routine Care: feeding and supplementation, preventative care, recognizing concerns, and knowing when veterinary involvement is needed
• Breeding, Birthing & Cria Care: breeding decisions, pregnancy management, birthing preparation, neonatal care, and lessons learned through challenging deliveries
• Fleece & Fiber: fleece characteristics, histograms, shearing, skirting, sorting, grading, show preparation, and understanding potential end uses
• Showing Alpacas: preparing animals and handlers, show-ring expectations and etiquette, fleece competition, and understanding results
• Breeding Program Development: pedigrees, phenotype, conformation, fleece traits, color and pattern, genetic diversity, and evaluating potential pairings
• Farm Business & Agritourism: developing alpaca-related income opportunities, special events, customer experiences, farm tourism, and lessons learned from operating a working farm

Sometimes mentorship is answering one question. Other times, it’s helping someone think through a decision over several months or years.

Experience Behind the Advice

There are things you can learn in a classroom, and there are things alpacas teach you themselves.

Since beginning our alpaca journey in 2012, we’ve experienced the everyday realities of building and managing a herd: breeding and births, difficult deliveries, neonatal care, routine health management, shearing, fleece preparation, halter training, showing, buying and selling alpacas, transporting animals, developing farm events, and making breeding decisions that may take generations to fully evaluate.

We’ve also bred and exhibited alpacas at the national level, developed an extensive multicolor breeding program alongside our solid-colored foundation, and experienced both the successes and the mistakes that come with growing a program over time.

We believe both are worth sharing.

Continuing Education

Experience matters, but so does continuing to learn.

Our hands-on experience is supported by continued education from veterinarians, judges, fiber experts, researchers, and other professionals throughout the alpaca industry.

Our education has included coursework, conferences, and seminars covering camelid reproduction and birthing, neonatal cria care, alpaca health and medicine, conformation, advanced fleece assessment, histograms, skin biopsies and fiber density, fiber sorting and grading, show preparation, color genetics, emerging alpaca genomic research, farm business, and agritourism.

Educational experiences have included the University of Tennessee College of Veterinary Medicine Camelid Conference, the three-day Advanced Sorting, Grading & Classing course, hands-on neonatal and birthing education, advanced fleece assessment, specialized color genetics and genomic research education, and Beyond Ag Tourism: Unlocking 5 Profitable Farm Tourism Strategies with Julie Roy.

Additional coursework and seminars have been led by veterinarians, alpaca judges, researchers, fiber professionals, and experienced industry educators.

We don’t believe experience means you’ve finished learning. As the science, research, and knowledge surrounding alpacas continue to develop, we continue learning too - and bring that knowledge back to our herd and the people we mentor.

Why Mentorship Matters

Alpacas are incredibly rewarding animals, but good ownership involves much more than putting a few alpacas in a pasture.

New situations will arise. Breeding decisions won’t always have obvious answers. A cria may need help. A fleece report may contain numbers you don’t understand. Your first alpaca show may feel like everyone except you knows exactly where they’re supposed to be.

Having someone you can call makes a difference.

Our goal isn’t to tell you there is only one way to raise alpacas. It’s to help you understand your options, learn from our experiences, ask better questions, and become increasingly confident making decisions for your own herd.

Looking for a More Structured Start?

General mentorship is available throughout your alpaca journey, but some new and prospective owners want something more intentional from the beginning.

That’s why we created Elderwood’s START ME UP Program.

START ME UP is our structured approach for helping new owners move from “I’d love to own alpacas” toward building a thoughtful, realistic plan. We can work through goals, farm preparation, herd selection, management considerations, and the decisions that come before — and after — bringing alpacas home.

Explore Elderwood's START ME UP Program

Get Started

Mentorship can take many forms — a conversation at a show, help evaluating an animal or breeding decision, a farm visit, hands-on guidance, or a phone or video conversation when you simply need another perspective.

If you’re considering alpacas, building your herd, or facing something new, reach out.

You don’t have to know everything to raise alpacas well. You just need to keep learning — and know where to turn when you have questions.