Alpacas In The Oven

Even as we wait eagerly for this year's clutch of baby alpacas (they're so darn cute, all legs and neck for the first week or so), we're working hard to make new babies for next year.  Our first purchased animal, Indy, is trying her darnedest to make a baby and Luna, our daughter's animal, is already showing signs of having a bun in the oven.  Come this time next year, and a whole lot of good fortune, our little herd of five will expand to seven.

Alpaca breeding is a bit of a hilarious thing in its own right.  Alpaca males make the most hilarious noises trying to get the ladies to lay down for them.  For the most part the girls roll their eyes at the boys' clumsy advances, but every once in a while something clicks and the girls give in.  We've been doing most of the breeding in a pen next to the young males' enclosure, hoping that by watching (and they certainly watch) we'll have fewer tentative males when it's their turn.  The whole process is a bit surreal, setting up liaisons between ungulates, but it's also exciting to think that in 11 months we'll have new babies to spoil rotten and the potential for some truly great animals like our little champion, Romeo.