October 2007 - Alpaca Notes

Alpaca Notes - Tasmania

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Alpaca Notes - Tasmania - October 2007

Under the Hose

October 31st 2007 00:36

My alpacas love to be hosed down in warm weather. We’re lucky here as we have an all year stream on our place and a couple of dams so we’re rarely short of water. When we get a nice warm day (yes those do happen in Tassie), I get the hose out and all the alpacas come running.

Alpacas enjoying a hose down

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Posted By: Rosemary - Category: Alpaca Care

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Moving Alpacas - Part 2

October 28th 2007 20:49

As well as the physical logistics of transporting your alpacas, there are different quarantine requirements between the states regarding the transport of animals. You need to find out the rules before moving your alpacas anywhere. It’s too late once they’re at the border to another state, to find out you haven’t done something you needed to.

Alpacas - Exploring their new home

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Posted By: Rosemary - Category: Alpaca Care

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Moving Alpacas - Part 1

October 24th 2007 21:26

I’m often asked how we transport alpacas. Within Tassie, we use our trailer which was purpose-built by my Dad. See my other post Anatomy of an Alpaca Trailer.

For interstate travel, we use Tasmanian Horse Transport. As the name suggests they are horse movers, but they have also been transporting alpacas as well, for many years now

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Posted By: Rosemary - Category: Alpaca Care

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First Vaccination

October 22nd 2007 02:40

We did little Marco’s vaccination on the weekend. We do the crias (babies) at 4 weeks of age, then a booster at 8 weeks, then annually from then on. Some owners do them twice a year.

Alpaca vaccination

We use Ultra Vac 5 in 1. It includes vaccines for 5 diseases: pulpy kidney (enterotoxaemia), tetanus, black disease, malignant oedema and black leg

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Posted By: Rosemary - Category: Alpaca Care

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ALPACA EATS

October 19th 2007 03:39

I was just having a think about what to write today and remembered I bought some Gran Mix for the alpacas the other day and clean forgot to get it out of the car.

It’s not a major issue. The car will just smell a bit like a grain silo for a while that’s all (it smells worse after we’ve had a pizza in there to be honest

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Posted By: Rosemary - Category: Alpaca Care

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BOYS!

October 16th 2007 22:36

Sometimes male alpacas need a bit of coaching when it comes to girls.

Some are natural Romeo's and seem to know their role from birth, (a bit sad for ones destined for the snip). Other boys need a lot more instruction and it can take them a while to get the gist of it

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Posted By: Rosemary - Category: Breeding

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Tough Rodents Round Here

October 15th 2007 01:30

This post isn’t about alpacas, but another type of furry creature you tend to find on rural properties. I think it has more to do with poultry than alpacas. Anyway, we had a bit of a mouse thing happening which had to be dealt with. I haven’t been a fan of regular mousetraps since I saw one go off and the poor mouse took a full 30 seconds to stop struggling.

I don’t like poisons much either. It must be a horrendous way to go, and I don’t want to risk having poisons around with my small dogs

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Posted By: Rosemary - Category: Product Reviews

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Fancy’s

October 11th 2007 22:14

These are a commercial breeder’s nightmare. Alpacas with multi-coloured fleece. The commercial breeder wants all their alpacas exactly the same colour – usually white, so the fleeces can all go in the bale together.

Fancy Alpaca - Sally

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Posted By: Rosemary - Category: Fleece & Wool etc

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Anatomy of an Alpaca Trailer

October 10th 2007 21:47

My Dad, who was a Spring Maker for 60 something years, made our alpaca trailer. He originally built it as a removable cage for the back of the flat-tray, but the ramp was way too steep and high to haul the alpacas up. And getting off, they’d simply jump, so if you happened to be holding onto the end of a lead when they went, you’d go paca-sailing off the back of the vehicle. Not fun.

So he made the cage into a trailer. It’s a tandem trailer (two wheels on each side). I think this makes it more comfortable for the alpacas, and it remains stable when not attached to the vehicle. You can walk around in it without it rocking like a see-saw

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Posted By: Rosemary - Category: Alpaca Care, Product Reviews

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Goodbye girls

October 8th 2007 03:05

Yesterday we said goodbye to a couple of girls we sold, Jessie and Penny. They’ve gone to live about an hour’s drive south of here.

I thought we’d be in for a challenge getting Jessica into the trailer as she likes to make a big fuss. However, little Penny hopped straight in and because Jessie is Penny’s mum, her instinct to take care of her baby over-took her fear of the trailer. After just the slightest hesitation she hopped straight in after her

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Posted By: Rosemary - Category: Alpaca Care

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Upside down and Stuck

October 5th 2007 03:28

Had a bit of drama here yesterday. I was out attempting to free some wire mesh from the long grass (lesson: never leave wire mesh on the grass) when my neighbour yelled out that one of the alpacas was stuck.

Our neighbours’ house is only about 200 metres away, so easy yelling distance

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Posted By: Rosemary - Category: Alpaca Care

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Brown eyes or blue?

October 2nd 2007 22:28

Alpacas can have either brown eyes or various shades of blue, from very dark to an ice water blue. Some have one brown and one blue.

There is a lot of controversy within the industry about whether alpacas with blue eyes should be used for breeding. Some people think that the blue eye gene is a defect and should be bred out, Other people prefer the blue eyed alpacas

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Posted By: Rosemary - Category: Breeding

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December 2009

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