Alpaca News
Alpacas as Sheep Guards
With the lambing season about to start it seems a good time to remind ourselves what a worthwhile job alpacas can do as sheep guards. In Australia alpacas natural guarding abilities have been harnessed for many years, with much more successful lambing percentages when gelded males are run with sheep. In Britain, there has been a slower uptake and realisation of these most intelligent animals' abilities to ward off predators like foxes. If alpaca breeders and sheep farmers got together our gelded males could do more than just produce fabulous fleece and look pretty in paddocks.
In this photo, below, Ione is displaying her displeasure at a predator and "showing off" her fitness and health at the same time. Ione is a great fox-chaser and no fox wants to risk its life with this alpha female!
Below is a recent testimonial received by Tina Metcalfe of Moss Carr Lodge Alpacas from one of her clients.
"This next lambing will be the third year that Hill Top Farm have used their flock of (wether) male alpacas
to guard their youngest and most vulnerable lambs. Following a particularly difficult year when over 30 lambs were killed out in the fields by foxes it was decided to take an alternative approach. Ten young males were purchased to act as guards and the next season only two lambs were lost as a direct result of foxes killing them when first born. This was particularly significant as the farm gamekeeper had indicated that the farm's 400 acres had an increased amount of foxes prowling due to some deforestation of the neighbouring woods.
Hill top have increased the amount of ewes in the last year and have purchased 4 more young male alpacas from Christina Metcalfe of Moss Carr Lodge Alpacas in order that as each field of young lambs are released from the birthing barns they can have two 'guard' alpacas to watch over them. In the event of danger the alpacas emit their characteristic high pitched warning sound and because they spend the rest of the year grazing with the sheep they appear to develop a sense of 'ownership' over the ewes and their offspring. For a sheep farmer, alpacas are an ideal animal to have on site as their welfare can fall easily in line with that of the sheep throughout the year. Hill Top produces around a thousand lambs per year and the average value of £55 per lamb the cost of the herd of alpacas is recouped within a few years and anyone who has seen how a young lamb is ripped apart by a fox will appreciate that this is a worthwhile way of trying to stop the killing."
Mr and Mrs J Kinder, Hill Top Farm Partnership, Newark, Notts.