Sweet Harmony Farm

We’re having such a great time with the alpacas.  They do have their individual personalities and over the past month, we’ve begun to decipher them.  As I’ve mentioned, Julio is the self-appointed guard and leader.  When he heads out into the pasture, the others all follow within minutes.  When he heads back up to the barn, here they all come.  In the evening after sunset, he stands by the paddock entrance and seems to scan the woods.  When he hears something, his ears perk up and his body stiffens.  We’ll sometimes shine the flashlight to see if we can see anything, but we never have.  Sometimes we’ll hear a neighbor’s (it’s the country; neighbors aren’t exactly ‘nearby’) dog in the distance, but usually we don’t see anything.  Then he’ll slowly walk off into the pasture, look around again, and start grazing.  One by one, the others follow, and graze under the stars.  They’re all such a friendly little group together.

But alas, that changes somewhat when food is involved!  Fighting over food is normal in the livestock world as well in the wild.  We try to make things as fair as possible, like one would with their own children.  Some evenings they pleasantly eat their grain and then go back to the paddock and cush.  Some nights the spit is flying!  The usual instigator is Guinness, who for some reason seems to think that all the bowls are for him.  Dan will try to move him from the others’ bowls, then everyone rearranges themselves; what a riot!  We always put Arlo, our littlest and shyest guy, separate from the others or else he’d never get to eat, and I ‘stand guard’ by him until he is done. 

And then there is the hay feeder.  Usually all is fine, with everyone quietly munching.  Then they see me getting more hay to add, and I’m usually bombarded by alpaca mouths.  That’s fine as I can still easily add that flake or two into the feeder.  Once again, Guinness seems to think the hay is all for him.  His first victim is usually Julio who when it comes to fresh hay, always fights back.  Yesterday the two went at it, spitting and screeching at each other for a good solid 5 minutes.  The others were eating on the other side of the feeder but when the spitting started, they stood back with me out of the line of fire to watch the spit fight.  What a riot my 2 geldings are!

But what we love the most is in the evening when the alpacas play.  Either Coty will head butt Bo Jangles or vice-versa, the other returns the favor, and off they go.  They’ll run gracefully together side by side around the pasture, stop for some head butting, wrangle their longs necks together, and roll all over each other.  They make gentle snorting sounds as they wrestle and off they go again running.  Sometimes they’ll head butt the others gently to join in the race around the pastures.  It’s so beautiful and peaceful to watch, under just the moonlight and stars.