Peggy and Mike Pollock are the owners of Heart of Texas Alpacas. Prior to moving to Texas from Florida in 2000, we owned a software development company specializing in the Medical Supply industry. After 25 years in business, we decided that we wanted to do something different. Owning your own business demands long hours and little time left for family. Mike had never had a "corporate job" and thought he would like to give it a try. After a brief job search, Mike took a position at Dell in Round Rock Texas, and our new life began.
Initially, we lived in the city. After a year of city life, we decided to move to the country. We purchased a log home on 10 acres of land in Liberty Hill Texas. Naturally we bought a horse for our daughter Jamie, who was 9 years old at the time. We quickly found out that owning a horse is a lot like owning a boat. Lot's of work and money with little time left over to actually enjoy it. It turns out, there are issues if you don't ride a horse regularly, and after a few bucking bronco rides, Jamie decided that a horse was too much work and not too much fun. We did continue to have horses as expensive decorations up until 2006 when we sold our last horse for $750 dollars to a friend.
Next, we entered the world of FFA and Jamie began showing Steers. Although it was a great experience to raise a calf to adulthood, when in the show ring, our black steer (named Coal) usually ended up showing Jamie. Coal's 1500 pound weight advantage was too much for our 90 pound daughter to manage, so we switched to goats the next year.
Goats are fun, but they can be a handful. We often found the goats walking on our cars, and they are escape artists. It turns out that goats, in combination with a Labrador retriever, can be break-in artists as well. One day when we returned from an overnight trip, we found our front door open. Our Labrador, Precious, had learned how to open the front door and Precious and our goat had an all night party. After several weeks of cleaning, and many dollars spent on repair and replacement, we finally got the house livable again.
We soon realized that although working for a large company did have many advantages, we missed the thrill of owning our own business, but were not sure what we wanted to do next. Mike enjoyed his work at Dell and didn't want to leave. Peggy was finding herself with too much free time and was looking for something new to do. We wanted to do something related to agriculture that was fun, and could be started as a part time business growing over time into something exciting.
That's when we decided to raise Alpacas. We could live in the country, have a business, and allow our daughter to remain active with livestock. Alpacas, it turned out, were friendly, not escape artists, and hardly what anyone would consider dangerous. Heart of Texas Alpacas was started in late 2004 and our new business. We originally began our herd with 5 bred females plus a 2 month old little girl named Vanessah. This allowed us to start an Alpaca business and enter the show circuit right away.
In 2005, we moved from our 10 acre ranch to our present 35 acre ranch in Elgin Texas, about 20 miles east of Austin. For the most part, Peggy and Jamie run the day to day operations of the ranch, and Mike helps out with the chores some evenings and weekends. We have found many new friends in the industry, and our herd continues to grow.
What a wonderful world we now live in! Come join us!