From medical publishing to alpaca raising might seem like a big leap, but it made sense to Diane Rosenberg. She was a biology major in college and then went on to advanced study in molecular biology, so the study of animals had been an early interest. After she married Lee Rosenberg, a physician and researcher who had been the dean of the medical school at Yale, she looked for a new profession that would return her to her love of animals. Finding a 20-acre farm in Princeton, where Lee went on to work as head of research and development at a drug company, and then to teach at Princeton University, she discovered the alpaca, the farm animal of her dreams. Beautiful, sweet, easy to raise, with a wonderful end product, the fleece, she was sold. Meadowgate Farm Alpacas, LLC, has been in business now for 13 years. Diane has acquired a wonderful farm manager, Tammy Maurer, and her husband, Rich, facilities manager, and together they have put together a state of the art breeding farm for both suris and huacayas. Spring and fall are busy times with breedings, births, and shows. As the farm has grown, it has expanded to a second 20-acre property where Tammy and Rich live with half the herd. Meadowgate’s breeding objective is to improve the fleece in terms of its fineness, softness, and density, while maintaining strong body conformation and health in their animals. They have acquired some 25 award-winning herdsires of excellent quality that are used on a rotating basis to produce exceptional cria. “We have found working with these wonderful animals to be delightful. The thrill of new births and the excitement of the shows never seems to grow old,” says Diane. Her husband, Lee, continues to focus on his teaching of human genetics to students at Princeton, though every now and then he will address himself to the puzzle of alpaca genetics. “There is so much more known about human genetics in health and disease, but there should definitely be some commonality between man and alpaca,” Lee says. “Finding out about it is the trick, but the mapping of the alpaca genome will certainly help.” Diane plans to work with alpacas into her old age. “My mother lived to 97. If I do something similar, I want to busy, surrounded by these animals.”