Silver Thunder Alpacas presents:
Alpaca Care and Feeding

Alpacas Eat Grass and Hay All Day

Alpacas are primarily grass eaters, feeding on hay or pasture.

The alpacas free-graze in the pasture all day long. We also give them hay each day. In the winter, when the grass is growing slowly or not at all, we give them extra hay each morning for them to munch on throughout the day. We buy Orchard Grass hay grown locally and baled in sixty-pound square bales. They eat about half a flake a day per alpaca. (For reference, there's about eight flakes in a square bale of hay.) See footnote at bottom of this page for more info on hay types.

Alpacas Are Easy on the Pastures

Alpacas are very easy on the pastures. Since they have pads instead of hoofs on their feet, they don't churn up the ground, cause compaction of the soil, and thus wreck the grass as cows and horses tend to do.

There's another reason alpacas are easy on pastures: Because alpacas have only bottom teeth that close against a top dental pad, rather than two sets of teeth like horses, they do not destroy the grass roots as they eat. Instead they clip the grass above the ground level, at a height that allows the grass to grow back again quickly. Thus saving the pastures and keeping them green all year long. Because they are so much easier on the grass, it's possible to keep up to ten alpacas per acre of pasture. (Compare this to cows, where it's recommended that there only be one mother and her baby per acre.)

Alpaca Pellets and Special Treats

We also supplement their forage intake with pellets once a day, normally in the evening. These pellets are made from a mix of various grains plus vitamins and minerals. They are specially formulated for alpacas by feed mills which prepare the blends in conjunction with veterinary advice. We combine two different brands: Mazuri Alpaca Chews and Hallway Alpaca Developer. See footnote below for more pellet info.

To the pellets we add some additional vitamin and mineral supplements. Made by a company called Stillwater Minerals, they are in powdered form. (We buy them online through Useful Lama Items.) The supplements are made especially for alpacas to help them run faster, jump higher, and have nice straight legs. We add a pinch per animal each day to their pellets.

Besides their daily feeding, we also often feed the alpacas pellets by hand: To build animal confidence in socializing with people or as a reward for good behavior when halter training. Or just as a special treat. (Mostly because it's fun for us...)

Another special treat we like to offer the alpacas is baby carrots. They'll eat them right out of your hand and will come running to the fence if they see you have some. "Oh, looky, the two-leggers have those orange crunchy things again, let's go get some." Boy do they come running. It's enjoyable for both them AND us.

Alpaca Vet Care

Alpacas are easy to care for, as they are excellent at taking care of themselves. They pretty much know what they need, so we just make sure they have plenty of grass and good clean water. We have vets on call that specialize in camelids (alpacas are members of the camel family), but it's only on rare occasions that we need to use them. Speaking of how much easier alpacas are to care for than other animals, I once heard a vet say, "If these were horses, we'd be out here a lot more often." Alpacas tend to be more disease-resistant than other livestock.

One other point about vets: A surprisingly large number of alpaca owners are veterinarians. That is a very good sign for this industry. When someone with hard training and long experience buys the very animals they work with, it speaks volumes about the quality of the alpaca business. They know a good thing when they see it.

Alpacas Are The Ideal Small-Acreage Livestock

Take all these things together, and you can see why alpacas are considered the ideal small-acreage livestock. Let us show you. We'd love to have you come visit our alpacas and learn about them close up. If nothing else, it's amazingly therapeutic to just watch and listen as they contentedly graze. Standing in the field and listening to the soft tearing of grass and the quiet munching sounds is very comforting. Sort of slows time down just a bit. Makes you glad to be alive. Come and see.

Please feel free to call or email and we'll be glad to arrange a visit at a time that suits you best. C'mon over. You'll have a great time.

Thanks again for visiting,
Chuck and Nancy

Silver Thunder Alpacas
Making great alpacas in Greeneville, Tennessee
Pure Bred and Hand Fed!

---

Footnote: Good Hay, Bad Hay
There are a couple other kinds of hay that are good for alpacas. Timothy hay is excellent, with lots of nutrients. (The same goes for the Orchard Grass that we use.) Bermuda is good, as it's very hardy, though it's protein content is a bit lower than some others.

Keep this in mind about hay: A given amount of hay will have more nutritional content than the same amount of pasture grass. That's because proteins in the hay has been concentrated during the drying process. There's less water, thus less weight, so the animals get more nutrition out of each bite.

There are a few hay types we stay away from. We avoid Alfalfa hay (except in small amounts as a special treat) because it is too rich for them due to its high protein content. Alpaca's digestive systems are very efficient, so food that's too rich can cause ouchy stomachs. Same for Clover hay, and in addition, the white clover being avoided because the seeds become trapped in their teeth, causing excessive foaming (same as it does in horses) that can possibly lead toward ulcers in alpacas. We also don't put the expectant-mother alpacas on Fescue hay (or pastures) in their last trimester. Fescue (the most common type of hay around here) is bad since most of it has endophytes (a soil parasite) that can lead to birthing problems in pregnant females due to a thickened placenta. We also avoid perennial ryegrass (though annual is ok) because it releases a toxin that leads to "the rye grass staggers".

Footnote: About Pellets
Mazuri Alpaca Chews and Hallway Alpaca Developer are the pellets we use. Both of these feeds use Dr. Evens' formulas for proven alpaca nutrition. (I've created links to both sites, but note that the Hallway link is only to their corporate website: While Hallway is the premier feed in horse racing, they don't yet list the Alpaca Developer on their website.) The Mazuri is a larger pellet (approx. 1/2 inch long x 1/8" around), while the Hallway is a smaller pellet about half the size (approx. 3/8" long and 1/16" around). We order these through our local feed stores, each product from a different feed store, as it turns out, because each store has different sources.

Another pellet trick we learned from John and Tina, our mentors at Pacifica, is to add a bit of water to the mix before serving it to the alpacas. This allows the pellets to absorb the water and expand slightly, which helps lessen the likelihood of choking problems. One further choke-reducing method is to add fist-sized rocks to the feeding bins to force the animals to eat around them, thereby slowing down their feed intake.

Recently we have begun using a new feed from Mazuri: Alpaca Crumbles. The crumbles are even smaller than the Hallway pellets. They are almost like crushed up pellets, sort of a course granular texture. Since we started using the Alpaca Crumbles we have reduced our choke problems even more.

For our pregnant females, or those that are nursing babies, we use Evens S/G/L, a feed blend formulated by Dr. Evens and sold by Blue Seal. (S/G/L stands for Starter, Gestation, Lactation.) Not only do the alpacas really seem to enjoy it, but it's also cheaper than the others. (Though we have to drive 70 miles to get it.)

 

Click here to return to the top of this page: Alpaca Feeding.

Click here to return to the Silver Thunder Home Page. Or just click on the Silver Thunder logo in the top left corner of any page on this site to return to the home page.

Proud to be an American.

 

This page last updated 10/23/05