Alpaca Experts

Chuck & Kathy Rademacher

Alpaca Breeders

Chuck and Kathy met in a Detroit high school, over 40 years ago and the chemistry must have been right. After getting married and moving to Virginia, Chuck was heavily involved in the computer software business and Kathy was doing accounting work for a couple of small businesses. They came to New Zealand in 1977 and their lives changed forever.

In 1982, the average number of sheep per person living in New Zealand was 22. That was the year that Chuck & Kathy moved to the country and purchased the requisite 44 sheep for their 10-acre “Queen Street” farm. It wasn’t very long before they also had pigs, goats, ducks, chickens and beef cattle. Chuck never does anything half way and they ended up having over 200 pigs on their little farm in Albany.

The motorway north of Auckland came within a few metres of their property about the same time that the Rademacher’s were considering semi-retirement. They made the decision to leave the convenience of Albany behind and build a new home overlooking the Kaipara Harbour on the South Head Peninsula.

They weren’t on the new property very long before they made another live-changing decision. They bought their first two alpacas. For the next few months, every time Kathy would go to work, Chuck would sneak a couple more alpacas onto the property. They now have over 40 females, two stud males and a dozen or so stud wannabe’s.

Building a herd of alpacas so quickly meant that Chuck & Kathy had to climb a very steep learning curve. Attending neonatal clinics, seminars, conferences and visiting other farms became a weekly event.

Many things had to be learned the hard way. Coping with internal parasites, in particular, was a battle fought and won. It wasn’t until the Rademacher’s started doing their own fecal egg counts that they felt they truly beat that enemy.

On the farm, Chuck primarily looks after the nutrition side of things while Kathy looks after training (and hugging) the alpacas. They work together on mating decisions and all matters to do with animal health, having done over 400 fecal egg counts between them.

Since they’ve only been breeding alpacas for a little over two years, Chuck & Kathy are a bit reluctant to wear the “expert” badge. But, with the amount of time and effort that they’ve poured into researching, learning and looking after their alpacas, they aren’t embarrassed by the title. They truly enjoy helping others to sort out problems and look forward to some exciting questions emanating from visitors to this site. If they don’t have the answer to your questions, they have the contacts and resources to get the answers.

So if you have any problems or queries that you would like to put to Chuck & Kathy, email them here, and we will publish them here on goodGround.com. We aim to have all enquiries published within 48 hours.