 | Alpacas eat grass and hay. Most owners supplement this with a little grain
each day. Nothing fancy. In fact, alpacas don't do well on
high-protein diets. |
| We spend up to an hour a day with ours. We scrub out and refill the
water buckets, give each animal a cup of grain, rake up the hay they've rooted
onto the floor and add more as needed, and clean up the dung piles. Then we
usually halter one or two and go for a walk. This keeps halter training in
place and gives us an excuse to mess with them a little longer. |
| Dung piles? Alpacas only go to the bathroom in one or two places. (They'll
even stand in line to wait their turn!) These piles need to be cleaned
up each day so that they don't track dung around and get it in their fleeces. |
| Every month they each get a shot of wormer to protect them from meningeal
worm and gastrointestinal parasites. |
| Every couple months their toenails need to be trimmed. They don't
have hooves like horses or cattle. Their feet are soft pads with
toenails on top. |
| Once a year, they need to be sheared, or heat stress would be a real
danger during the hot months. |
| During the summer, we offer to squirt their legs and bellies with water.
They almost always take us up on the offer! |
