The Alpaca industry is a thriving and dynamic group of businesses and individuals. As an Alpaca Rancher, I've had the opportunity to meet many new people and made some great friends. We've been helped by many fellow Alpaca Owners and Breeders as we learned this interesting business. We've been able to help many others. In general, Alpaca owners are a caring community, ready to give advice and assistance day and night.
As with many Alpaca owners, our background was far from agricultural, but more on that later. Our ranch is Heart of Texas Alpacas and is truly a family business which has given us the ability to own a business, live in the country, and work with some great organizations and individuals. Our ranch is the final slice of what was once a large cattle ranch that we purchased in the summer of 2005. We live in a 1909 farmhouse that sits on top of a hill and was last "renovated" in 1970. We've spent countless hours clearing out brush, turning weeds into pasture, replacing or repairing 50 year old fencing, and repairing the old out buildings. It's a never ending job, but something that gives us great satisfaction.
To be honest, the Alpaca business is my wife and 15 year old daughter's venture. My career has spanned over 30 years in the Information Technology world. For the first 25 or so years I had my own software development company. In 2000, I decided to see what it would be like to work in the corporate world, and accepted an opportunity to work as a software developer at Dell in Austin Texas. I'm now on the Global Enterprise Architecture team and love my full time "day job", but I always enjoy coming home to visit with our herd of 30 + Alpacas, 4 dogs, 1 cat, my wonderful wife and daughter, and of course, the AlpacaTrack project.
So what is AlpacaTrack and why should you care?
AlpacaTrack began as a tool to manage the health of my herd, but evolved into a way to promote the Alpaca Industry and the wonderful folks that are part of it. The goal of AlpacaTrack is to promote member ranches and let them tell their story. It is also designed to easily extend to other organizations or specialty web sites. Examples of how this works can be found at Central Texas Alpacas, a loosely affiliated group of Alpaca owners and breeders in the Austin and San Antonio Texas area, and at Long Neck Acres , an individual Alpaca Ranch located in the Marble Falls area in the Texas Hill Country. We recently donated a free website to Our Field of Dreams Alpacas in Oklahoma during the TXOLAN Spectecular in Feburary of 2008.
AlpacaTrack is just one small way that I can help Alpaca Owners and Breeders and Alpaca related associations let folks know about this wonderful industry. At the same time, by having a single location to manage their business and livestock that can be shared with other farms and ranches, their customers, and possibly state and local organizations it provides both the ranches and organizations that choose to participate a way to save time and money.
So, Welcome to AlpacaTrack and come back often!