What starts with a and ends with a?

Beautiful coats

Alpaca!

What a delightful time at the underadvertised Maple Tour in Lanark County.

We had some fun. I have a ton of photos, and met a new species of critter. Truly, I have never seen one before. We meant to travel overseas this year, but bought a gently-used house, instead.

They are called Alpaca. Unsheared, they appear something like a cross between a teddy bear and petite llama. They are precious.

Alpaca (Wikipedia - Vicugna pacos) is a domesticated species of South American camelid. It resembles a small llama in appearance.
Alpacas are kept in herds that graze on the level heights of the Andes of southern Peru, northern Bolivia, Ecuador, and northern Chile.

Owner giving them some grass and dandelion leaves

However, In Ontario, they are to be seen on local farms! I was so surprised.


They live up to about 20 years. 
Females are pregnant for about 345 ± 15 days (Wikipedia), but the folks we visited said theirs run around 330 days. They wee cia was a week old. What a cutie. The mom's milk wasn't coming in well, and they were supplementing with goat's milk and yogurt.


With three stomachs, they chew their cud and efficiently process food energy.

Females giving us the eye

The animal is not used as beasts of burden, as are llamas, but for their lovely coat, used like wool, and their meat. This family keeps the males seperate from the females. The males are easier for us to visit, the females were a bit flighty, especially with the baby and another mother about to give birth any day now.


They are 'induced ovulators' in that the presence of semen causes ovulation. Wouldn't that stop the vast amounts of money spent in IVF?! 

The females are a bit testier, and more inclined to spit than their male counterparts.

I cannot believe the differences in their coats.

They tend to poo in the same place, females at the one time. One began, and the others followed. From my reading, it keeps down the internal parasites as they do not graze in these spots. The males do not go to the bathroom togther, but do use the same spot. There has to be a human joke there somewhere!

There are several provincial and national (e.g., alpaca.canada.ca, alpacaontario.ca) associations, and a registry of breeds, breeders and pedigrees.

This Toronto-born inner city girl learned something new on Saturday. What fun!