Saturday, September 24, 2011

Alpacas...

We went to the Alpaca Farm today.
Pretty neat (for me anyway).

The little brown girl is only 2 weeks old.

These are all females.

Males.  Much friendlier.  One wanted to kiss people.

Here's C petting the baby.
Alpaca facts.  (let's see how much I can remember.)
From South America
From the camel family.
Can be breed two weeks ago giving birth!  These people wait longer.  (There were other breeding facts I will spare you.)
Need to be in a herd. 
Pretty gentle animals.
Do hum!  (that one's for the twins!)
Breed for their fleece.
Their hair/s are hollow which act as a great insulator.  (Something like R90 where our roof has R30?  Some factoid the lady put out there.)
You can't import them from South America any more.
Breeding them is catching on and growing.
A rug made from Alpaca fleece needs no washing; simply flip it over, sweep under the rug and walk on it.  You can hand wash if needed.
Their fleece is great.
  *socks will absorb wetness and not be wet.
  *she really went on about the fleece.
Their manure can go directly into the garden without burning your plants.
They have sweet breath.
Oh, one more interesting fact...the all go "to the bathroom" in the same spot.  (true.  we saw it.)

Just in case you wanted to learn more here's a site.

1 comment:

shelly said...

How cool! I love alpaca yarn....tried to convince the hubby that we needed to raise them because it's be cheaper than buying the yarn (I got the "lucy" look...probably because our current lot is the size of a postage stamp!)