Alpaca Facts

What is an Alpaca you ask?





How do I care for an Alpaca?

Alpacas are extremely easy keepers with no special dietary requirements. Generally, feed is estimated at a rate of one square bale of good quality hay per Alpaca per month during the winter. In the spring and summer they graze but should also have free choice hay at all times. You our_herdcan also feed them grain or alpaca pellets once or twice a day along with a mineral lick and always good clean water from a sanitary source. There is no need to groom or bath alpacas but they do need a toenail clipping now and again. They should get their annual inoculations, and be de-wormed.

Once a year one shears their Alpacas much like sheep. You can shear them your self but I prefer to get the shearer out for that job. You can expect to get any were from five to twenty pounds of fleece from a single animal.

Cleaning up after your alpaca is so easy and their manure is like gold for the garden. Alpacas share a communal dung pile and their droppings can go directly on to the garden much like rabbit pelts do. You will be very popular with your gardening friends and neighbors.

Alpacas are a herd animal and can not be kept by them selves, you must have at least two animals.

Why Have Alpacas?

Alpacas are mostly raised for their fiber which we call fleece not wool.katerina_head Their fleece is three times warmer and seven times stronger than wool. Their fiber is softer than the finest wool and has a higher tensile strength. These wonderful animals have only been in Canada for a little over a decade and the fiber industry is a fledgling one. One can sell the raw fleeces to the mills, fiber co-op or spinners. One can have it processed and made into yarn for knitting or weaving. Make other things such as rugs, blankets, felting and even tickling for quilts. Have the alpaca sent to a mill and made into incredible cloth so you can sew with the cloth. The list is endless you can go as far as your imagination wants.
If you want to have easy animals to farm who will give you so much back, alpacas are for you! They are such gentle creatures giving one feelings of peace and tranquility.