It’s a relatively quiet month this month on the alpaca front although little Inti is now classified as a big boy and has been introduced to the boys. As a general rule cria should be weaned at about 6 months old, this gives their mums time to recover before the next cria is due. I am not sure if it was Inti or Coca who decided that weaning should be bought forward but either way Inti stopped suckling at about 4 months, so it was not absolutely necessary to split him off from the girls. Inti was also showing very little interest in his mum and spent most of the time with Reeya.
So I decided as Inti was no long feeding, I would gradually introduce him to Cusco & Jester by taking them for walks together and a small amount of socialisation on the hard stand. Surprisingly each time Inti went for a walk Coca would stand by the gate and not take her eyes off the route we had taken and only went back to eating grass when Inti was safely back in the paddock. Other than this all went rather well, so I plucked up courage to release him into the boys paddock. This didn’t go exactly as I thought it would. Cusco is definitely top dog so I was anticipating him to throw his weight around and generally do a bit spitting to put the youngster in his place. Jester on the other hand tends to be quite bouncy and loves to kick up his heels and charge around the place so was hoping him & Inti would have fun running games. This didn’t quite happen; it turns out that Jester decided to put little Inti in his place by chest barging and generally hogging breakfast and the hay net. Cusco on the other hand was lovely and placid and would allow Inti to snuggle up quite close when resting.
Breakfast seemed to be an ongoing battle and little Inti needs his pellets more than Jester, which led to Jester getting banned from the hardstand for breakfast and whilst Cusco & Inti shared nicely, poor Jester just gazed over the gate honking forlornly. I have now reintroduced Jester and they all share relatively nicely, with Inti holding his own when he does occasionally get spat at.
In the meantime, poor Coca was very baffled and spent the next week not really leaving the fence line that divided her from Inti. When splitting off cria you are supposed to put them out of eyesight from the mother however this is a little tricky when I only have 2 paddocks with a very small dividing section, but things have now settled down and both Coca & Inti have relaxed into their new environments.
It’s a real shame that the alpaca showing at the Devon show was cancelled this year, I think Inti would have done well. With continued help from my neighbour, we take the alpacas out on a regular basis, she has managed to get Inti walking nicely, he is very calm, still a little obstinate (he has to be in front of his human) but will take amazing amounts of prodding and poking and general detritus removal from his coat. I managed to extract a 30cm stick that was so far in his floof you couldn’t even see it, and to top it off we seem to have lost his eyes under his top knot. His head is now basically a ball of floof, with a nose & a couple of fluffy ears sticking out the top.
He has also decided he really likes carrots, which is very sweet although at the same time Jester decided he didn’t. This was all very odd, until yesterday I went to feed breakfast only to find a tooth in the food bowl! I had a slight panic and consulted google to see what came back, obviously it was another thing I didn’t know about alpacas. At the age of 3 alpacas change their teeth, so although Jester was eating grass and small pellets he was struggling to chew larger things with wobbly teeth. I am happy to report he is now back to carrot munching, I am hoping this also explains why he was being so grumpy with Inti and that now fun might be had.
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