Exploring

Our little crias are a joy to watch they are most active early in the morning and late in the evening. The scamper and run about chasing each other, wizzing all over, they are very agile. The also have a rough and tumble too, trying to get each other down onto the ground, its a bit like wrestling. They use their necks to push each other down or try and bite each others legs to achieve the same results. When they get each other down the lay over each other to keep the other alpaca pinned to the groun. They also explore other things like goose feathers in the grass. Sometimes they will come up to us as we sit in the field and they sniff at us or pull our clothes or hair with their teeth, they are sooo cute.

We have a cheeky chappie at the moment; Gallant, son of Masala, it seems that he is not getting enough milk so while the other adult alpacas are feeding he sneaks up and has a quick suckle from someone other than his mum. Most of the time he gets away with it because he is white (his mum is brown) and the other white mums do not seem to notice especially when they are feeding. We have also given him the odd bottle to supplement his feeding but at the moment he does not readily come for it so I guess most of the time he is able to get enough from various sources

Bumper crop of alpaca crias

This summer we have been very busy here at Abravo Alpacas with our bumper crop of crias (baby alapacas). We have had 11 cria born, the highest number yet. Sadly on of our girls Caitlin had a stillborn which was very sad for us all, but she seems to have got over it and we have already mated her with our best boy Abravo Wizard, so hopefully all will go well next year.

We have had five females (Timora, Nerrissa, Nira, Candy Charm and Saffron) and six boys (Invicta, Tybalt, Galahad, Albion, Viscount, and Gallant). To date all are doing well and some have some really stunning fleeces. Our latest little girl was a surprise as she was a month early however the biggest surprise was Masala's cria. We did not know that she was pregnant until April having no record of any mating. However I think it was more a case of an escapee rather than an immaculate conception. But the biggest surprise was that she has had the brightest whitest cria and she is brown so it looks quite strange in the field to see this little cria sat next to a brown mum.