Alumnae Profile

Maren Bradley Anderson ’95

For Maren Bradley Anderson (known as Rachel at college), post-Mount Holyoke life has taken an unusual turn—she has recently become an alpaca farmer. Maren and husband Charles, both adjunct professors at Western Oregon University, decided to buy a farm and raise large animals. Their first thought was to raise llamas, but after attending an alpaca show, they were hooked. “Alpacas are more than just little llamas—they’re cuter and charming, and because they’re smaller, people who would normally be intimidated by big animals are not intimidated by alpacas,” Maren said.Maren and her husband spent eighteen months researching the animals, visiting farms, and talking to people, and her first alpacas arrived in December 2004.

Success in the alpaca business comes from selling breeding stock, and female alpacas are worth more than males. Different farmers have different ideas of what constitutes a good breeding animal. For Maren, good conformation (straight legs, good teeth, etc.) comes first, but finely textured fleece is also important.

Maren Anderson with El Barto, one of the seven alpacas she and husband Charles raise in Oregon.

For alpaca farmers, the major difficulty is raising the capital to buy breeding stock. Maren and her husband, having sold their home in Berkeley, California, and moved to Oregon, had enough up-front capital to buy their animals. But they did confront a few difficulties later—clearing forested land to make a pasture required a great deal of work, and their first baby alpaca died at three days old. “It was heart-wrenching,” said Maren, “Anyone who has had a pet die knows how that feels.”

The Andersons have seven alpacas—three breeding females between the ages of five and nine, and four males all under two years old. Alpacas, unlike most large farm animals, do not require much attention. Maren and her husband feed them in the morning, give them fresh hay, and let them out into their pasture. After work, Maren safely locks the alpacas in the barn, because cougars and coyotes can be threatening. Maren compared alpacas’ personalities to that of cats—humans have to earn their love and can gain the alpacas’ trust by feeding them by hand. Like cats, “if you go outside and say ‘treats! treats!’ they will come running,” Maren said. “A lot of [alpaca farming] is just watching them out your window—they’re entertaining little creatures.”

To find out more about Maren’s farm and alpacas in general, visit www.et-farms.com, where she maintains a blog dedicated to life on an alpaca farm.

—By Amy L. Cavanaugh ’06

Photo credit: Charles Anderson

Someone sent me a T-shirt not long ago that read ‘Well-Behaved Women Don’t Make History.’ They don’t make good lawyers, either, or doctors or businesswomen. Imitations are redundant. Yourself is what is wanted. — Anna Quindlen, commencement address, 1999