DIVERSIFICATION
MANAGING AN ALPACA BUSINESS
West Wight Alpacas and Llamas has enjoyed one of its best ever summer seasons. BAS board member Neil Payne tells us about the diversified business he runs with his wife Michelle and shares some useful guidance for similar enterprises based on their experience.
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n 2010 Neil’s wife Michelle announced that she was going to buy four alpacas. “My first question was what’s an alpaca, my next question was where are you going to keep them?
“Within a few months she’d bought 11 alpacas – she’d also sold the house and bought some land,” Neil told members during a BAS webinar. “I didn’t complain too much as I quite liked the idea and that was the beginning of West Wight Alpacas and Llamas back in 2011.” At the time Neil and Michelle could find only one other herd offering alpaca walks. That was Peta and Bruce Ives at Dunreyth Alpacas. Since then, walks and experiences have become hugely popular and at least 80 other businesses are understood to be offering similar experiences across the UK. West Wight Alpacas has grown gradually over more than a decade and Neil and Michelle now employ up to 14 people over the summer months with up to ten people working each day. “We are a tourism island which gives us a great haul of people to draw on,” he said. The business itself is made up of several different enterprises and Neil described West Wight Alpacas as the centre, or hub of a wheel with five spokes including: • A breeding herd of Suri alpacas and Woolly-silky Llamas • A walking and trekking centre with alpacas and llamas • A farm park with rare breed Wensleydale sheep, miniature donkeys, Golden Guernsey and pygmy goats, Kuni-Kuni pigs, small mammals and “a huge variety of poultry”
• A country gift shop called Snouts and Tails • A café called the Llama Tree Pizzeria
Alpaca walks
There are 60 Suri alpacas and one Huacaya on the Isle of Wight together with 25 llamas – Neil also shares a Suri enterprise in the north of England. The West Wight walking herd is made up of 30 alpacas and llamas with another eight animals joining the business in 2022. “We need to have that number of walking animals because we offer five walks a day in high season each lasting about 45 minutes. Some owners walk for longer but we choose to offer more frequent walks – up to five, or we may increase this to six a day. This is because visitors like to spend a bit of time with us and then go off to do something else – we are best described as a half day attraction,” Neil added. The limit for walkers is eight with another eight people allowed to accompany a walk. This is the number judged by risk assessment, and agreed by an insurance company, as safe. “In practice it means we have a maximum of eight alpacas and sixteen people on a walk. That is the way we work because I want to avoid a situation where a family of five for instance books one alpaca and tries to share it around – it just doesn’t work for us. “The absolute maximum that works for us is one alpaca and one person sharing or accompanying that alpaca. Continued on next page >>
