We have 21 alpacas here at the moment and we like to think of them as part of the family, we love them all in varying degrees, I have my favourite, as we all may have. Lily, actually, if you're interested.
It would be nice to think that they would love us back but that is of course nonsense, they are animals, they don't love anything other than food, rolling in dry dust bowls and being able to wander freely. In fact they don't even have the capacity to love, only we do, that's one of the things that make us unique.
They do seem to have emotion though, they seem to get excited, they seem to get stressed they seem to relax.
We feed our herd daily with a mix of Fibregest and Camelibra and this seems to get all the alpaca emotions flowing but I'm not sure which. Take today for instance. We have a small 'feeding' paddock that they herd visits daily, it's ten yards from our house, they all charge or wander up when they hear me open the feed bin or pour the feed into the bucket..........and then the bun fight begins!!
We have two troughs and eleven buckets, enough space for 21 portions of food. The trouble is I can't put food into every bucket simultaneously, they have to wait, which obviously they don't understand. Today when I was bent over pouring food into one of the troughs, head down, surrounded by the fluffy ones I was hit by a double head shot of spit. The culprits were Priscilla and Bobby, mother and daughter, two of our foundation herd members, luckily it was only two 'air shots' and no green stuff but it got me thinking.............were they excited, moody or just saying 'get out of the way'??
Either way I still love them.
Now if that isn't rambling drivel I don't know what is!
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