GRAND JUNCTION —Alpacas are cute. They’re soft. They’re quiet and gentle — for the most part.
And raising them is also the easiest way to earn the federal tax advantages set aside for raisers of commercial livestock, something more and more western Colorado small-acreage farmers are recognizing.
“I wanted to use our acreage in a good way, and so I started looking into different kinds of livestock, and alpacas really appealed to me,” said Leah Reynolds, who with her husband is eight years into their alpaca-raising business in Loma, Horse Mountain Alpacas. “The tax incentives were part of the reason for us.”
The trend in this country of raising alpacas — herbivores domesticated in abundance in the South American Andes, related to camels and closest in species to the larger llamas — took off in 2008. That’s when a federal farm bill reclassified alpacas as livestock, rather than exotic animals.
That kicked open the barn door to the tax breaks.
Read more of the article at GJSentinel.com.
