Articles on Alpacas - Herd Management Routine - For the New Breeders

I wanted to write this article for the new alpaca breeders who fell in love with these beautiful creatures and purchased them without knowing how to maintain them. This is my herd management plan and I hope it helps you out.

To begin with my husband, Tom, and I had our camelid veterinarian out to the ranch to do a check up on the alpacas we brought home. Based on the knowledge of the parasites in the area our vet recommended a worming program for us, which I will share with you further in the reading. The vet also recommended that we weigh our alpacas weekly to assure that they were maintaining their weight and to give us a more hands on feeling of our alpacas. Weighing and body scoring the alpacas weekly helped us to learn when our alpacas were feeling well and when they were not. Remember that alpacas are prey animals and they will hide their illnesses from you. Once you can actually tell that the alpaca is ill it may already be too late, so you need to pay close attention to your alpacas and learn to observe and take note of the slightest change in behavior or weight.
Following is our herd management plan:

• Weekly: Weigh and body score alpacas. Especially on crias we touch legs, feet, lift tail, touch belly, ears, etc. to get them used to human handling. It is a lot easier to give shots, trim toenails, cut teeth, etc. if the alpaca is not afraid of you.
• Monthly: 10 cc of Probios paste for adults or 5 cc of JumpStart to our crias.
• Quarterly: Trim toenails
• Yearly: Same as the first two steps above and we give 2 cc of CDT (for pregnant females this is given 6 weeks before birth to allow the mother to pass on the antibodies to the cria), Ivomectin or Dectomax at 1 cc per 110 pounds, and a worming paste such as SafeGuard or Panacur. Possibly have to cut teeth or fighting teeth on adult male alpacas. Sheer all alpacas. IMRAB and West Nile vaccination may or may not be given. Please consult with your veterinarian if you should apply these vaccines.

Although I mentioned crias in the above routine this is not the only management we do for them. As in all newborn babies additional care must be given that fall outside of the above management.