RAISING ALPACAS

Excitement runs rampant in your life when raising alpacas from birth to adulthood. Sometimes life with alpacas becomes more exciting than expected! But in the end, a great adventure.

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Why do we raise alpacas? For the final end product that luxurious fleece and for a wonderful lifestyle. Learn about alpaca fashion and lifestyle.

Read about evaluating animal fiber and alpaca conformation before you purchase.

Alpaca Birth

Pronking at dusk (also known as leaping and playing)! A smile will form on your lips and you will think how cool you are to own alpaca when you see your cria pronking.

The alpaca pictured was our first cria. What a joyful moment you'll experience when you hold your first cria.

Watching the miracle of an alpaca birth will bring a nervous tug to your lips. Will everything go OK? When it does then a relieved broad smile spreads from ear to ear. What happens when things don't go right? Read about the birth of an alpaca on our farm that did not go as expected, but has a happy ending.

Watch a birth and read more info on alpaca cria.

Crias need to be weaned but it is a controversial subject among alpaca breeders. Read our philosophy and experience weaning crias.

Get out the halter and start alpaca training. Now is the time to halter and handle your alpaca. We just started by getting them use to our touch and proceeded from there to haltering and leading.

Is it essential to halter train your alpaca? Read why we think alpaca training on the halter is important.

After we had the basics, we decided to try a more advanced training program. Read about clicker training and how that went for us.

Once your alpaca reaches adulthood, raising alpacas becomes a matter of maintenance, right? Well, that depends. Mostly, yes. But be prepared for different problems to crop up.

Basic maintenance of alpacas requires feeding, toenail trimming, worming, vaccinating, and shearing.

Alpaca nutrition is very important to the success of your farm.

Provide high quality alpaca food and you'll have a successful alpaca business. You'll want to be careful with ryegrass as it can cause problems in your alpacas.

Stress is a large factor in alpaca health. What if your alpaca becomes ill and dies? Should you have alpaca insurance?

Does your alpaca have a facial swelling? Well, it could be cud it's planning on swallowing later or it could be a facial abscess.

Read about a bacteria called mycoplasama haemolamae to understand why you should be wary of purchasing thin alpacas.

Your alpaca may be thin from another problem. Balding, too. Not from old age but from mange mites.

Aggression can be a problem caused by handling a cria too much. This doesn't become apparent to the novice alpaca owner until it's out of control. We caused an alpaca to become disrespectful due to being novices which you can read about by clicking here. Our solution to the problem may not be trainer approved but it has worked for us and we didn't even have to touch the alpaca!

Think it takes a pro to train your alpaca? Not really. You can do it yourself if you have patience. Training alpacas is fun and rewarding.

When raising alpacas you'll notice male alpacas have an amazing ability to seek out females that are ready for breeding. How does he do this? It's the 'ol flehmen response.

It's important to keep your alpacas stomach in balance. Knowing more about the Alpaca Digestive System will help you to understand how to keep your alpacas stomach happy.

Do you have a small herd and want to save on shearing costs? Read how we did our own alpaca shearing by hand.

An alpaca has a perpetual grin. We recorded Lucky so you could see him smiling...especially when he's naughty.

Raising alpacas from birth to adulthood will take you on an adventure ride better than anything at Disneyland and you get to have it right there in your own pastures. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll be frustrated, but you will never be bored!

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