Hobby farmer’s alpaca herd finds a new home
After two weeks of uncertainty about their futures, the alpacas that Ottawa-area hobby farmer Mike Caldwell posted on Kijiji for $250 have found a good home.
Five of the six — Llucy, Stormy, J-Lo, Rocky and Snowflake — are now in the care of Ruth Vanderlaan, who operates a petting zoo on her farm in Winchester Springs, a little less than an hour’s drive south of Ottawa.
Unfortunately, the sixth, Vinny, didn’t live to meet Emoji the emu or any of the other animals at Vanderlaand The Barnyard Zoo. He died Nov. 3, two days before the deal was struck and the move organized.
“I’ve thought that every year for the last five years would be his last,” Caldwell said. “I think he just thought, ‘I don’t want to do another winter and I don’t want to move,’ so he just gave up.”
The herd arrived at their new digs Monday. On Wednesday, Caldwell, feeling what he described as “empty nest syndrome,” made the nearly two-hour drive from his home in Denholm, Que., just north of Wakefield, for a visit.
“I’d kind of hoped they’d recognize me and come running, as if maybe they missed me,” he said as his former herd surrounded Vanderlaan, her pockets bulging with feed. “But they seem happy, which is what I wanted for them.”
Caldwell had placed an ad on Kijiji about two weeks ago, looking for a new home for his herd. He’d had alpacas for nearly a decade, but the propensity of many of them to jump the four-foot fence surrounding his property made him anxious about passing motorists and hunters. But as he often hosts weddings on his property, he was reluctant to erect an unsightly six-foot deer fence. It was time, he felt, to find them better living arrangements.
“We can’t keep them penned,” he said shortly after placing the ad, “and they’re just causing us a lot of stress. Rocky and Snowflake just go on journeys together and we live too close to the road.”
Caldwell originally planned to offer them free to a good home, but decided instead to attach a token price of $250, simply to discourage the agri-poseurs and dilettantes. He says he was inundated with emails from wannabe owners after a Citizen video went viral, reaching more than 700,000 viewers.
“I didn’t reply to the people who just wrote, ‘I’m interested. Email me,’ or asked things like, ‘How much do they eat?’ or the man who said he intended to eat only one of them,” he said.
At the same time, numerous friends of Vanderlaan’s tagged her Facebook page with the video or sent her the link to the Kijiji ad. She admits she wasn’t looking for any more animals — she already owns eight alpacas, as well as five llamas and numerous sheep, goats, rabbits, peacocks, chickens, ducks, mules, pigs and other fauna, as well as Emoji — but couldn’t resist.
“When I looked at the video, I thought they looked nice and friendly and quiet, so I thought I’d investigate.”
After a couple of emails went unanswered — Caldwell was in Florida — she phoned him and offered to buy them.
Caldwell’s roost, meanwhile, is hardly empty. He and his wife still care for three horses, two cats and three dogs, one of the latter a rescue. “I’ll be putting that $250 towards helping the dogs under my care,” he said.
Meanwhile, he said he’s thrilled with the herd’s new home and although he doesn’t like to anthropomorphize animals, he thinks the alpacas might feel the same way.
“I don’t know if alpacas actually like things, but if they do, I think they’ll like being at a petting zoo.”
The animals, he noted, were always popular attractions at the weddings he hosts.
“But I can’t imagine a better place than this,” he said. “All the infrastructure is here in place, and knowing that they’re at a place where they’re going to be safe and where they have animal experience is great. They’re going to a better life than they had. That’s the most important thing.”