Not Fainting Goats, These

There comes a time in every young cria’s life when the strange and oft-demanding personage known as the farmer straps a frightening contraption to their face, always followed by an insistent tugging on the chin from the rope hanging down from a ring tied in the center.  This is, of course, only a halter - a necessary lesson for any alpaca whether they will be shown or not. 

Handling alpacas is, arguably, much easier than other livestock.  While I have stood placidly by as more than one young cria has leapt right at me after I’ve placed the halter on their head, a similar action by a cow or even a sheep would require that I move aside, and quickly.  A half-sized alpaca tends to bounce off rather than trample, aided by their natural reticence to physical contact and the fact that I outweigh them by at least a factor of two.

That being said, the range of reactions these young fluffy pillows have to the halter is varied and sometimes hilarious.  Some simply accept it after a few tosses of the head, merely testing the lead a few times before succumbing to the fact that I am, in truth, in charge at that point.  Others fight the whole way.  One young lady likes to make repeated leaps right at me whenever I try to lead her anywhere.  She seems to forget the number of times she’s bounced off me and ended up limbs akimbo on the barn floor.  My least favorite response, but simultaneously the most hilarious, is the dramatic faint.  Some cria, especially the young males, will drop the ground in the most dramatic poses of distress.  They are simply overwhelmed by the experience and can’t face the world with that darn thing strapped to their head.

Beyond the humor of the faint, it’s a big pain.  They won’t move, they won’t stand up.  One had to be lifted bodily and taken into the vet room.  The trip back was similarly strenuous.  Sometimes you can tickle their back hips and they’ll stand again, sometimes it takes fetching their mother to coax them up. 

After a full day of this, my wife found a handy trick.  She found that if you place your arm around their neck gently and keep their head up, the cria is much less likely to drop like a Victorian lady after climbing stairs while wearing a tight corset.  It doesn’t always work, and once they’re down there’s still the problem of getting them back up, but it helps.  That counts for a lot.

Now, if we can figure out why it’s the boys that are such sissies we’ll be better off.