Hello! My name is Anthony, I recently took over the care of 4 beautiful alpacas and 4 incredibly friendly sheep. Their story starts a couple of years ago when they were taken on by the previous proprietors of Longridge Alpacas. This is where I first came to meet them as one of the volunteers who helped with walks initially and later feeding and cleaning. They lived on a lovely field and had a fabulous field shelter, paddock and field.
Almost every day paying guests would attend and either a family or group of friends would lavish attention on them, give them treats and most importantly their payments contributed towards their upkeep and care.
Then COVID came along and turned everyone’s world upside down. The visits stopped and the money stopped coming in. To add to the previous owners’ misfortune the owners of the land the animals were on needed the land back so the boys needed to find a new home! Then in September last year they moved to some private land and sadly we quickly realised that this land wasn’t suitable for the boys’ long term home as the ground was too wet, too small and flooded terribly following even one day of rain.
It’s at this point that the animals’ previous owners approached me and asked if I would be open to taking them on permanently as their circumstances had changed and it was likely that they would have to rehome the alpacas in the near future. I said yes without hesitation, I’d have been devastated to say goodbye to them and wanted to do what I could to keep them in the local area as they have brought so many people so much joy over the last few years. My partner and I had been saving towards a deposit to buy a house but we used that money to purchase the alpacas and their equipment and set about finding them a new permanent home.
At the beginning of 2021 a landowner got in touch and offered to lease their land! “The Glen” is perfect, it is beautifully undulating and provides dry areas in even the most severe of rains, there is a lovely brook running through, it has a great area for parking which will allow for visitors once COVID restrictions ease and there is plenty of scope for us to get Longridge Alpacas back to where it was prior to the first lockdown.
The only thing preventing us moving them right away was the lack of a field shelter. We had spent literally all of our savings and with COVID restrictions the alpacas were generating zero income. So we reached out to the public for help and in under 2 weeks with the help of the wonderful people of Longridge and the surrounding areas and all those who follow the boys on social media we managed to raise almost £2000! We found the perfect shelter which was installed in March and the boys moved to their new (hopefully forever) home a few days later.
Since moving in to their new home the boys have adapted brilliantly and are absolutely thriving in their new GREEN environment. They are noticeably more energetic, they're cleaner and I'm sure that they are significantly happier!
Our plans for the future are to run Longridge Alpacas as a non profit business where every pound raised will go directly back into providing care and stimulation for the animals, to carry out essential maintenance and to make improvements to their home and surroundings.
Thank you for reading!
