Chicken Chaser

The new baby (no name yet) has been caught chasing chickens. Apparently she is training to be a stock guarding alpaca!! We believe in starting them young at Laurel Farm.

We are having quite a few enquiries about our sale on Saturday, so we are hoping the weather will be kind to us.

All but two of our should-be-pregnant females are spitting off. This means that they are rejecting the attentions of a male alpaca - so they think they are pregnant, which is good news as sometimes they do not carry their cria through the winter. Literally they spit at the male to tell him to go away, although some also kick and run away with their ears laid back. Lucky humans don't behave that way!!

The two who are not spitting off were mated late in the year and may not have been pregnant in the first place as we do not repeat matings too late because we do not want babies born in the winter months as they are at much greater risk and if they have to be kept inside they are more work too.

We heard screaming in the lower paddock yesterday and a quick visual check told us that Alario, a male that we had to separate from the other males because he bullied them had somehow got in with the other males and was chasing Pedro and they were fighting every time he stopped running. I ran down the race and opened the gate to chase the males out to give us a chance to separate Alario and Pedro. Luckily Pedro and the others were ahead of Alario and I managed to shut the gate just in time. I put the boys in another paddock and chased Alario up the race where Mike steered him into a small paddock where he usually lives on his own. Luckily there was no damage done. I checked the area and it looks as though Alario must have jumped over a fence where the top wire was a little slack. He must have really wanted to get at Pedro. Perhaps there is some jealousy because it is springtime and they are both looking for lerve.