|
BY CHLOE SMITH STORIES OF THE HEARTLAND
Forget the cornfields and dairy cows familiar to many pastoral Midwest landscapes. A family farm in Foreston has a star attraction of a much softer, gentler and quieter kind. This unconventional farm brings a lesser-known service and product to the farming scene with its main feature: alpacas. These domesticated South American camelids, closely related to llamas, are prized for their soft, hypoallergenic fleece used in yarn and textiles.
Triple T Alpaca in Foreston is a 40-
|
acre, three-generation farm that has been in operation for just under 10 years, and, as its name suggests, alpacas are its focus through the breeding and sale of the animals and their fleece.
Owned by Beth and Brent Turner, the farm is also operated with Brent’ s parents and the couple’ s 17-year-old son, Jameson.
“ When we got animals, we decided to combine households and find a house and barn that worked well to have us all together,” Beth Turner said.“ We ended up moving to Foreston about eight years ago.”
Since then, Triple T Alpaca has been hard at work building its breeding
|
program and has become nationally ranked for its efforts.
“ We had seven babies on the ground this season, and they’ re all ready to go,” Turner said.“ We have eight working breeding males— so, eight genetic lines that we can work with— and we have four junior herd sires from our original eight.”
Triple T Alpaca currently houses about 39 alpacas for its breeding program.
Before breeding can take place, many of the animals are shown competitively across the country to build their renown and determine where they could be improved upon through their descendants.
|
“ Our goal with our breeding program is to improve the quality of the mom,” Turner said.“ The male is going to give the baby better traits. So, we buy high-quality males to improve on our females.”
The qualities the farm looks for in its females mostly relate to the animal’ s fleece, including its length, brightness, color, softness and fineness.
Once those traits are evaluated, a male is selected that would theoretically improve those traits in the female.
Breeding season for Triple T Alpaca takes place in the spring, and the females are pregnant for about a
|