alpaca

This showed up on my 5 month old alpaca cria about 2 weeks ago and has steadily gotten worse. I'm going to be taking him to the vet some time this week, but I wanted to see if anybody on here knew what this is. His skin feels like it's thickened and is almost bumpy. I don't know if it's a...

Since I've been bottle feeding Darwin, my 5 week old alpaca, I suddenly have fleas in my house. Darwin must come home with me at night and sleeps in my living room. He's 20 lbs now, and I guess my question is, can I put topical flea medication on him? for cats maybe? Also, can I bathe him? He...

The alpaca cria I'm bottle feeding is almost 3 weeks old. I try to avoid unnecessary petting and touching, and I try to feed him and walk away. However, I don't live on property, so he has to come home with me so I can feed him at night. During the day he hangs out with the girls and our year...

*groan* I've been bottle feeding this baby alpaca, Darwin for two weeks now. He was doing pretty good up until an hour ago. I had just taken him outside (on the weekends he doesn't get to go out with his herd since I don't live on property)and when I brought him back in he laid down and I could...

We're finally throwing in the towel. We made the mistake of bringing alpacas to South Florida, and they just aren't doing well. We love our animals, but it is just way too hot for them here. We are definitely looking for a buyer up north, at least central/northern Florida. I'm not sure what our...

We have animal issues. Constant animal issues. Last week we had an alpaca who just wouldn't get back up. Had the vet come out and he took fecal and blood samples, but essentially told us that she wasn't getting enough food and wouldn't likely survive. We've doubled their feed and are slowly...

I don't know how we keep having so many issues with our alpacas. Calamity Jane has been pretty healthy up until recently. We noticed that she has some hair loss on her nose, ears, and in her "armpit" regions. We figured this may be due to flies, but I noticed last week that she had sores on her...

We're battling flies like crazy like everyone else out there, with the strange exception that our goats are hardly bothered at all. Its the poor alpacas that are just being swarmed constantly. We tried to spray them with an essential oil mix to ward off the mass of flies, with no luck. It wasn't...

We've got one troublesome alpaca, Oreo, who started out ok, but developed a skin condition. She now has patches of thick skin, with a loss of hair in those spots. We asked our vet about it, and he feels it's a genetic condition (even though the breeder swears otherwise). So we put vitamin e oil...

For years my boss has wanted alpacas more than anything, and in 2012 he bought a small herd without knowing hardly anything about them. Well, now our original 2 boys are about 5 years old and lived harmoniously in the same pen until a few months ago when our big male started attacking the...

We live in South Florida, and my boss decided to get alpacas. We've had them for about 2 years, but this is my first year working with them. The days are starting to get miserable, with 90+ degree temperatures and a ton of flies. We have fans set up in their barns, and they like to play in the...

I've got an alpaca who we took to be bred last easter. Apple of My Eye was away on her "romantic getaway" from April 10th to May 11th 2014. We know she was bred at some point in that month. However, going by a May 5th date, she is getting to be overdue, as I have read that the average gestation...

Ugh, ok. So the latest dilemma occurring on the ranch has just sprang up. We have to keep our male alpacas separated, because they try to kill one another. So now we have to keep one male in the alpaca pen and one in the goat's nursery pen since the two are on separate parts of our property...

For the love of all that is holy, please tell me there are some spinners out there. We have 8 alpacas who are sheared once a year, which means we have a plethora of hair. We're new to this whole fiber thing, and none of us know how to clean it, spin it, and whatever else comes with it. We also...