The Alpacas arrive

In late October 2013, the girls arrived.  Five gorgeous Alpacas and one was pregnant.  Never having owned Alpacas before I knew that this was going to be a step learning curve, but I am a strong believer of throw yourself in to it.


When they arrived, the bolted right down to the far end of the property.  We hadn't had time to fix the fences within the property before their arrival.  So over the next couple of weekends it was a frantic race to get the fences fixed  and gate up so we could keep the girls up closer to the house when Polly gave birth.

We managed to set up a maternity paddock next to the house where there was plenty of shelter and shade.  It took us a whole day to get them all up.  We soon worked out that Polly was the boss and if she didn't want to go the others were not going to go.  We had to get them out of the far paddock because it was full of copperhead snakes and I did not want them to get bitten.

The other problem we had was that they had not had a great deal of human handling, and this made them very weary of us.  Polly was super peeved that she had kind of lost her domination and being told where she had to go on the farm.

Every day they were fed with alpaca mix and this gave me a chance to go out there and spend time with them.

In November 2013, Polly gave birth to Lucho, a strapping cria who, by the time he was 2 months old was a big boy.

The aunts are checking out Lucho just hours after he arrived.

Lucho at 9 weeks old

But, there was still one more alpaca to come, Thorn, our stud male, who we left with breeder until Polly had given birth and had settled in the her cria.

By the time Thorn arrived the major fencing had been done, so was able to be by the girls but not in the paddock with them.

 When Thorn arrived he was 11 years old and still going strong.  He has a very gentle nature and even if he is far away from the girls he is always keeping an eye on them.