Things we have learned as a small Alpaca ranch.
© rnw 1999, 2005
First Year
1. Paca fever is contagious.
2. Buy only ARI registered alpacas.
3. One bucket of hay outdoors is worth two in the barn.
4. Your relatives either think it is the coolest idea, or think you are totally nuts.
5. Put gates in the fence on the shortest line between the house and the barn.
6. Your local farm store is lots more interesting than you ever figured it would be.
7. Don’t ever lean over an alpaca with it’s head down - their heads are
HARD
8. Put your animals where you can see them from the house. The backyard is really
cool.
9. Alpacas like to dance at dusk - just after it becomes too dark to use the video camera.
10. Alpacas are a great stress reliever after a bad day at work.
11. Three alpacas really do fit in the back of a GM Silhouette.
12. Point the opening of the shelter away from prevailing winds. If possible - point
it so you can see into it from the house.
13. Put your pasture and barn/shelter on the high ground - we discovered we had done this
through dumb luck after we had several inches of rain this spring and the yard was flooded
for 3 weeks.
14. Two alpacas are necessary for their health and well being - three is better, four is
neat, five is fantastic, etc
15. Paca fever is Very contagious
16. Water buckets with built in heaters are harder to dump and rinse than those with
separate heaters.
17. If the snow gets deep, a snowblown path around the pasture is pretty neat.
18. Alpaca wool is as beautiful, and you will have more than enough, even if you do throw
away the dirty stuff.
19. Shearing alpacas is easier than shearing goats.
20. The fiber coop is a good thing.
21. You can not have too much portable fencing. And yes, the extra cost for a gate panel
is worth it.
22. Alpacas don’t do mint, however the rest of the herb garden is fair game - chives
are great and violets are fantastic.
23. We use a 12 x 16 foot ‘barn’ kits from the lumber yard
for a permanent shelter - looks nice and adds to the retail value of the house for
a non-farm buyer. Made Dutch doors at one end, regular doors at the
other - a really good idea
24. Replaced one section of roof with fiberglass to let in light - another one of
our better ideas.
25. Alpacas like small children. The little kids get away with things that they will
not tolerate from adults.
26. Small children like alpacas. 5 year olds even like to help scoop poop.
27. Alpacas like to play musical bowls. Having more containers of supplement
than animals decreases squabbling (5 or 6 pans for 4 alpacas)
28. Crias are the cutest, softest things you have ever seen.
29. Brand new baby legs can be anything but straight - don’t panic
30. You can hose down 20 alpacas in 5 minutes on a hot day, however it takes at least 20
minutes to hose down 5 alpaca.
31. Alpacas have long memories. They recognize friends (2 and 4 legged) they have
not seen for a year.
32. The best thing to do after you have been hosed down is go roll in the dust bowl.
33. If you are an alpaca and don’t have a dust bowl, create one.
34. All grass is not created equal - eat only what you like
35. Eat dandelions first.
36. Any tree or shrub is fair game - lilacs are delicious. They will eat,
debark or climb anything. Orange plastic construction fence wrapped around tree
trunks protects the bark fairly well.
37. Alpacas don’t like dogs
38. Alpacas like “their” dogs. They treat them with
indifference (the Newf) to real friendship (the Briard)
39. You need to ‘kid-proof’ the alpaca pen. They have the same curiosity
and sense of adventure as a child and everything goes in the mouth.
40. Make sure gates are securely locked. They have very talented lips.
41. The grass is always tastier through the fence, even if you were just on
the other side.
42. We put in some fence, then added more. this created some small, square pens in
places. Leave them, they are very useful.
43. Alpacas do not like the sound of hawks - especially in the car.
44. Be very, very, very careful of anything they might be able to get their head
through, fence, netting, lattice work, etc If they can get their head through
one hole, they can twist their neck around and come back out another. This can cause
serious injury.
45. Some very good books are:
“Llama and Alpaca Neonatal Care” by B. Smith, K. Timm and P.
Long;
“Caring for Llamas and Alpacas” a Health and Management
Guide” by C. Hoffmann and I. Asmus;
“The Alpaca Book, Management, Medicine, Biology and Fiber” by
E. Hoffman and M. Fowler.
46. Join AOBA
Second Year
1. Be nice to your vet - who else will make house calls on a Saturday night?
2. Having one cria is great, having two at the same time is better, it gives them someone
to play with. Being an only child can be lonely.
3. The baled, stacked hay is even better than the hay outside.
4. Yearling 'aunts' are required to baby sit.
5. Alpacas make great mothers. On a cold, windy night they will sandwich the crias
between them, out of the wind and warm as toast.
6. If Mom won't stand still long enough for you to nurse, you can always catch her at the
poop pile.
7. Be careful with chain link fence. It works well to keep dogs out, but make sure the
animals can't get their legs underneath it. We had one get caught in one of the
triangles at the bottom of the fence and tore through the skin over 1/2 way around her
leg. ( She made a full recovery, but it took weeks for it heal).
8. If you have gaps under your chain link fence, landscape timbers can be fastened along
the bottom of the fence to prevent legs from getting caught.
9. Cable ties are a marvelous inventions.
10. Women's Always brand sanitary napkins make great non stick dressings for leg wounds.
They go all the way around an alpaca leg and are easy to hold in place with some vet-wrap
11. Learn to spin. It is very rewarding and it gives you an excuse to play with that
marvelous fiber.
12. Go to at least one National AOBA Conference if you can. It is a great
experience.
13. Take time every day to just stand, watch and enjoy your alpacas.
14. Alpaca people are really great and very helpful.
15. Showing your animals is not as hard as you think it will be.
16. If you go to a show, put multiple hay containers in the stall-don't make the animals
compete for food, they have enough stress just being there.
17. Generally even a 4-6 month old cria should be shorn in the spring - it you let
it go for 1 1/2 years you get a lot of tip damage, the very long fibers can be hard
to spin, and the animal is way too hot that first summer.
18. Cutting toenails is not really that difficult. We find it works well to put
several alpacas in a small pen, then work on them one at a time.
19. It's real easy to keep track of who you have given shots to if all your animals are
different colors.
20. In some states you don't have to pay sales tax on farm purchases.
21. Yearlings are very interested in animals of the opposite sex. The book says the males
aren't ready to breed until 2 or 2/12 years, but don't count on your animals having read
the book. Keep them apart.
22. Alpacas can give real meaning to "In your face". One of the dogs got
to close to the cria, Mom moved the baby away, then came over, put her head right down to
the dogs face and sneezed at her. The dog backed off, she understood alpaca just
fine.
23. Alpacas are beautiful, marvelous, wondrous animals.
24. Boys will be boys and girls, etc. The boy crias check our all the machinery in
the barn, the girl crias ignore it.
25. ALWAYS check out anything that is the least bit unusual. That glint of sunlight
in the pasture may be pieces of broken glass buried by the previous land owner under what
turns out to be the favorite dust hole. One dirty knee (two is normal, but one is
not) may turn out to be caused by blood from a leg wound. Any unusual discharge can be an
infection.
26. If you have more than a couple of animals, it pays to find a good shearer. Less stress
on the animals and lots less stress on you.
27. Keep a well stocked 1st aid kit.
28. Alpacas love fans if the weather is hot or buggy. The greater the breeze the
better.
29. Mosquitoes seem to like brunettes better than blondes, the includes alpacas, they
really bug the dark colored ones.
30. Giving birth is a communal affair.
31. Alpacas can (and will) go through a much smaller space that you would think
possible. I ended up with a lap-paca when one went through an 15-18 inch space between the
top of the car seats and the roof. Fortunately I wasn't driving at the time.
32. Nothing, absolutely nothing, beats sitting out in the sun, spinning and watching the
babies play.
33. Metal trash cans work well to keep mice out of the feed supplement - get ones with
flat lids. You can't set anything on top of the domed lids. However, you can
always dance on the lids and make them curve the other direction. That works, too.
Year 3 and Still Learning
1. Alpaca yarn makes fabulous lace. Knitting
all those holes together takes time, but the result is both luxurious and elegant.
2. All bets are off in the show ring - no matter how well your little alpacas behave at
home.
3. The best laid plans . . ., etc are subject to the vicissitudes of the alpacas,
especially when it comes to breeding schedules.
4. Show judges may want uniform color throughout the fleece, spinners love variation.
5. PVC pipe and tees make great, lightweight fence.
It works well to keep alpacas out of the herb garden.
6. Attend all the vet seminars you can, there is always something new to learn.
7. One of the marvelous surprises in life is seeing what color the new cria turns out to
be.
8. When in doubt, call the vet.
9. The is nothing to compare to the thrill of stepping out your back door and having these
beautiful, exotic creatures right there.
10. Alpacas are more like cats; they are too sophisticated to act like a dog.
11. Alpaca owners walk around with hay chaff in their pockets.
12. Newly shorn alpacas look as silly to the other alpacas as they do to you.
13. 10 foot, 3/4 in pvc pipes are a great way to make your arms longer when you want to
move your alpacas.
14. It's a good thing that cria can't get driver's licenses - it's head down and "How
FAST will this thing go?"
15. Maybe, just maybe, you can fly if you jump high enough when the wind blows.
16. Alpacas are marvelous, magical, mystical
creatures.
17. Volunteer!