Riverside Alpacas is a family run farm raising alpacas since 1996. Three generations work together providing a great place for the herd to thrive. We are conveniently located in Central New York State. We focus on personalized daily attention for each animal. At Riverside, we take great pride in our herd and in educating anyone who is interested in these wonderful animals. We realize that you need to have many farm visits in order to have your questions answered and get to know us as breeders. Our animals will always be available for your viewing as you progress in your decision.

Our Story: We were first introduced to alpacas when Rose read about them in an airline magazine. Rose lived and worked in NYC, so she came to her sister Chris and husband Mickey who lived in the country. It took two visits for Rose to convince Chris & Mickey to enter the venture, but she did and the search was on. We started visiting farms and attending conferences. We decided that we would start the farm with solid colored bred female to build a fiber and breeding business. Late in 1996, at Dewey Meadows farms we fell in love with the first alpaca that we knew we had to take home. He was a young rose gray male (not at all what we planned, but he just looked at us with a special look and we knew). Soon after we purchased three pregnant females from Magical farms and another young male and Riverside Alpacas was born.

We knew that we had much to learn about the fiber business, but our mom has always been an artist that works with a huge array of mediums, so we knew she could help in this area. So we bought her a spinning wheel and sent her to spinning school. It was wonderful to have products made from our own animals. As the herd grew it became clear that keeping up with the fiber processing was going to be difficult to do by hand. We tried fiber pools and co-ops to acquire products to sell, but we still wanted our own fiber’s products.

We began investigating fiber mills and starting our own. At the end of 2002 Chris & Mickey began A+ Alpaca Fiber Mill. We knew that if we wanted the benefits of our own animal’s fiber, that other breeders would want that as well. A+ receives fiber from all across the country (now including Alaska) and produces yarn and roving for individual farms. Chris and her mother, Beverly Meade work full time in the mill and have recently added three part-time assistants.

Alpacas are a lifestyle we want to share with as many people as we can. From county fairs to craft shows to mill/farm tours we strive to share this wonderful venture.