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In winter it is essential to keep a close eye on your alpacas. Get your hands on them
regularly, and do a "body score" to check their condition.
Older alpacas
and nursing dams can easily lose condition in winter, and fibre hides it from
view.
Their woolly winter coats can hide the fact that they are skinny underneath.
Have a look at our newsletter above and the articles webpage on body
scoring
It is time to consider vitamin D supplementation (in the form of
ADE injections) for younger and darker coloured animals. We inject all our cria
and some of our teenagers in late April, late June, and again in August if it
remains overcast. We also specially watch for that “sluggish looking” cria that
may need an extra dose in between. In the extreme, a Coforta will also help
perk up a seemingly D deficient cria.
Make sure you have stocks of winter feed - hay, lucerne, chaff, lactating mix,
pea vine, alpaca pellets.
There are garden
plants that you can feed your alpacas as well - see our autumn newsletter above.
And remember that hay fed alpacas have a far higher water requirement
than grass eaters
Lower pecking order alpacas get less feed. Get hands on and move those suffering
into feed paddocks or where supplementation is available and competition is
less.
Also consider
earlier weaning of cria, if the cria is thriving and the dam is suffering. It is
perfectly OK to wean at 4 months in these circumstances.
With
Shows coming up in early Spring, start to identify those Show cria, work with
them towards haltering. You can work with cria of 3 to 4 months of age for
small periods of time (shorter attention span), and being used to humans makes
haltering much easier.
