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Cherish your visions; cherish your ideals; cherish the music that stirs in your heart, the beauty that forms in your mind, the loveliness that drapes your purest thoughts, for out of them will grow delightful conditions, all heavenly environment; of these if you but remain true to them, your world will at last be built.
-- James Allen  Background
When I was in college at the University of Michigan, I saw a commercial for alpacas and instantly fell in love with the fluffy and fascinating creatures. I quickly informed my fiancé and family about the interesting camelids from South America and attempted to convince them that one day, I would have an alpaca farm of my very own. Despite my excitement, my family was skeptical. I had always wanted to be a veterinarian growing up and had owned many different animals, but ended up going into psychology and anthropology instead, yet never gave up my dream of working with animals. After college, marriage and a lot of research, I convinced my husband that alpacas were in our future and we started visiting many farms throughout Michigan. We bought our first two alpacas in 2006; a dark fawn bred female and a beige maiden female. The following year, we added a grey maiden female, a full Peruvian grey herdsire, and our first cria to our farm. In 2007, we attended our first alpaca shows and had a blast getting to know other breeders and showing some of our girls. In 2008, we moved to a larger farm in Grant, Michigan. We’ve never regretted our decision to start our alpaca farm and we really love spending time with our alpacas. We’ve enjoyed learning the ins and outs of care and breeding, as well as getting to know other alpaca breeders and the industry. We look forward to increasing our herd size and quality of animals in the coming years.
Ashton Stone Alpacas Noah and Jillian Schwander 2345 W. 112th St. Grant, Michigan (616) 550-4018 Farm Information Our farm is located in the small farming town of Grant, Michigan, 25 miles north of Grand Rapids. Our farm is nestled among corn fields, apple orchards, and some of the largest muck farms east of the Mississippi River. This peaceful and friendly community, with its stunning views of nature is the perfect place to raise alpacas. Our alpacas have 10 acres of pastures to roam and several barns and shelters which are breezy and cool during the summer and cozy throughout the harsh Michigan winters.
Before purchasing our first alpacas, we did extensive research on the animals and the industry. We continue to gain knowledge from research and other breeders who are dedicated to improving fiber quality while maintaining sound conformation. We are constantly applying up-to-date information and practices on our farm. We have both full Peruvian animals as well as animals descended from a mixture of Chilean, Peruvian and Bolivian lines. Our animals have many nationally recognized bloodlines such as Pperuvian Felix, The Silversmith, Cperuvian Silvino, Cperuvian Silvio, 4Peruvian Royal Condor and more.
We love working with and taking care of our alpacas. We provide our alpacas with nutritious feed and hay, mineral and fiber nutrients, orchard grass and fresh water. We also clean their pens and pastures often. We are a small farm and enjoy working with our animals and doing all the chores around the farm. We are hands on with our alpacas and begin getting them use to human interaction and halter training at a young age. We are dedicated to producing alpacas that are not only healthy and uphold breed standards - but alpacas that are calm, well-trained and familiar with the demands of veterinary procedures, transporting and show rings.
Our goal is to improve our herd through purchasing new quality animals as well as making breeding choices that will advance fleece quality and conformation so that we are always improving upon the previous generation. We always take great care in breeding each of our alpacas in hopes that the future generations will have better fiber characteristics as well as beautifully balanced proportions and straight legs and top lines. We will continually check our progress by seeing how our animals stand up against others in the show ring.
When you contact us, our goal isn't to sell you alpacas; our goal is to educate you about alpacas and the industry to help build a strong and stable alpaca community. If we do sell you an alpaca or stud service, we are committed to helping make that choice as successful as possible for you. We offer a full array of services including extensive presale and new breeder support, hands-on training, health and reproductive guarantees, stud services, agistment/boarding, and ongoing after-sale support. Our goal is to make it fun and easy for you to get started and succeed in the alpaca industry.
We would love to have you contact us or visit our farm to meet our alpacas.
We are professional, love what we do and are committed to raising quality alpacas. We will provide you with the knowledge and insight to help you reach your goals and create or enhance your farm and breeding program. Whether you board your alpacas with us or take them to your own farm, we promise to provide you with continuous support.
Farm visits, e-mails, and phones calls are always welcome! Please visit our AlpacaNation website at for more infomation about our farm and our current sales list.
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