Moo’s Blog

The girl alpacas have been with us over a weeknow. They appear to be settling in well. They don’t eat as much hay as the boys, but they are a slighter build so I am supposing that is normal. The boys love gettign their grain forst thing in the mornings, and come running up to me and eat out of my hands, with Frankie eating out of the bucket. The girls took a few days to get used to me, but now they come running too,and can’t wait for the boys to get fed their grain and for it to be their turn. Keremeos was the first to take the grain, eating out of the bucket. Sasha, our girl alapca has been eating out of my hand for three or four days now. The littlest one, I call her Delilah, does not eat the grain either out of my hand or out of the bucket, but she does now nibble at bits of grain that have fallen on the grass. She still suckles from her mum, and is still very wary of getting near me.

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We are excited as our girl alpaca arrives tomorrow! Sasha is the new girl. She is about 15 months old and is the sister of Chopaka (male, single registered)and the half sister of Sumac (male,single registered). They all share the same mother, Keremeos (single registered), and she will be coming too along with a baby of hers so that Sasha (siingle registered) will not be lonely.
Alpacas need to have company. One on their own is no good as they get lonely. And since we can’t have our boys in with any female in case they mate, and particularly with Sasha who is a close relative, then we have done the next best thing to buying a couple of girls, and that is borrowing them!
Female alpacas are expensive to buy, more expensive than male alpacas. Double registered alpacas (those registered in Canada and the USA) are more expensive than single registered (those registered in just one country).
Sasha should be pregnant. Sasha is dark brown in color and Caesar, the male she was mated with, is a light brown color so we are hoping that the offspring will have brown fleece. We thi8nk she is pregnant as she spits and kicks at the male once she has “taken”. The cria, or baby,shoul dbe due about 11 months after mating, which means sometime around about September she should give birth!
We (the Royal “we” here…meaning mainly my husband!) have cleaned up the paddock where the horses used to be, fenced a new area off and made the shelter more suitable for the alpacas. Plus we have a heated bucket for the water for the females and more hay coming tomorrow to make sure they all have enough to eat over the winter.
Chopaka should be pleased to see the females. We took our males down to the neighbours alpaca farm (Sunshine Valley Alpacas) while we went to England and they stayed there for three weeks. (this is the farm that has Sasha and Keremeos and her baby, plus many other females,most of them double registered and the farm where we got our male, white, blue eyed (unregistered) Frankie.) When we got our alpacas back and walked them down the road back to our farm all but Chopaka were pleased to be home. Chopaka however spent many days looking over the gate to see if he could escape back down the road!!
I wonder what he will make of having females around?!

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