Alpaca News
Alpacas in the Snow
We have had a couple of emails wondering how alpacas cope during this sort of weather. During the recent snowy conditions with temperatures as low as minus17 on 6th December, all the females have had access to two large buildings with concrete floors. They spend every day shut outside with hay and water, unless the conditions are a snow blizzard. They come in at 4pm for the night, for their hard food and more hay. The girls don't have a bed to lie on and we use a deep-litter system of straw in the middle of the barn with the muck pushed into this area of straw every morning - most alpacas poo on this straw pile anyway. In addition, this year we have only one adult female with an alpaca coat on permanently.
Photo: left to right: Melina, Maddie, Katarina and Melissa.
The males in the fields have large run in shelters with earth floors. Again they have no bedding and they are mucked out every day. We are running ten mature entire males in one field and they all sleep in one shelter with no serious bickering. The shelters are on metal skids so they can be moved to clean ground. This is a system we have worked with for three years now and it seems to work well with no detriment to the alpacas fleece. The biggest challenge has been getting enough water to the alpacas, both in the fields and the barns and keeping paths free of ice and snow, for access to barns and shelters, without using salt.
Photo: left to right: Maddie, Isabella, Lia, Kizzy, Katarina, Honeysuckle, Luella, Naomi, Nikita, Francesca, Melina, Nerissa, Kaitlin, and Helena.