Submitted By:Marty Bennett
Email: marty@camelidynamics.com
My alpaca is
My alpaca won’t
My alpaca always…
I was reading an advice column the other morning quizzing my husband about what he thought Miserable in Missouri should do about the obnoxious bridesmaid that was ruining her wedding when it occurred to me that it might be fun to do a Q and A column. People are always ready with questions at clinics and enjoy a professional’s point of view about what is going on with “Bored in the Barn”, or “Petrified in the Pasture”. So I hope you enjoy this, the first of occasional Q and A columns. Dear Marty… If you have a question that you would like me to address send it to me in an email marty@camelidynamics.com or write it on the bumper of a brand new subaru forester and send it to Marty Bennett 18380 Pinehurst Rd Bend, OR
Dear Marty,
I just got back from my first show. My alpaca blew up in the ring and knocked the judge down. The judge told me that I should have prepared more for the show. I worked for hours and hours with my alpaca. I even got up really early the morning of the show to practice holding him still for fleece checking and showing his bite. It seems like the more I practice the worse he gets. I feel like a total failure.
Signed
Shattered in the Showring
Dear Shattered,
You have been caught in a very common no-win situation. Judges will often admonish exhibitors that they did not prepare for the ring when their alpaca misbehaves when nothing could be further from the truth. In fact often the animals that behave the best in the show ring were grazing happily in the field the day before the show and had no preparation. In my experience “practicing” for a show quite often makes the alpaca worse not better…especially when you practice immediately before the show…BECAUSE you are practicing the wrong things!
Alpacas come equipped with various amounts of patience, tolerance, intelligence, and body sensitivity. In most cases practicing with a nervous alpaca just before the show is going to use up the small amount of tolerance you begin with and is not going to improve performance. Your alpaca will get better at whatever he practices. Practicing things that nervous alpacas find difficult and annoying such as fleece, bite, and testicle checking over and over only makes your alpaca more proficient at avoiding them. Put him in a head-lock and wrestle him and you will only teach him how to more effectively wrest himself from your grasp.
Judges are fond of giving the instruction to push down on the back just behind the neck as a way of controlling the alpaca. I don’t find this to be effective and have met many alpacas that have learned to rear hard and fast at the first indication of a human hand moving toward the back. In fact pushing down on the back loads the catapult as many an unsuspecting exhibitor has found out. Alpacas are smart and they figure out very quickly the order of events in a show. They know when it is going to be their turn and they will begin acting up before you have a chance to subdue them.
Calm, easy-going alpacas don’t need to be physically subdued. Terror stricken, nervous animals are only made worse by physical restraint. The biggest reason for trouble in the show ring begins at home. We teach our alpacas to run from our approach instead of teaching them to stand and exhibit some self-control. Why should we expect an alpaca to stand quietly as a ring steward and judge approach him in the ring, when we have conditioned him to run from the approach of a human every single time he is caught at home. Improving your barn layout and barn etiquette is the place to begin. Learning to balance an animal to help him override his instinctive response to run is, in my opinion, the only real answer to improving show ring behavior. Special wrestling holds have an expiration date! Eventually your alpaca will learn to outdo you and you will be left with an animal that is virtually un-showable.
I too wish there was a free lunch but teaching a frightened animal to have confidence is not an easy or immediate process. The good news is that the best solution is FUN! Interesting training sessions over increasingly challenging obstacles is the best confidence builder and will teach your alpaca to trust your leadership.
Hi Marty
We have three juvenile males together and the 8 month old will occasionally mount the 5 month old. I know this is normal “little boy” behavior, but we are concerned with the effects this type of play will have on his fleece. He is entered in several shows this spring and we don’t want him all matted. These three boys (other is a 13 month old who is small and submissive) play frequently in very normal ways, neck wrestling, chasing one another, etc. They have plenty of room to run, and we are working with them frequently on lead in training for the obstacle classes, so I don’t think it is a confinement issue. I guess they could just be bored when no one is out there and they have only each other to amuse themselves.
The other issue that concerns us in all this is whether the “mountee” will forever feel subordinate and therefore not make good herd sire material. Ditto for the 8 month old, we don’t want to have him aggressively mounting all other male alpacas his whole life. Is there anything we can do to stop this? We don’t want to separate them now, because they will have to be together later and I don’t want to cause real fighting later. They are friends now, and I want to keep it that way. The behavior itself seems in the normal range, so it’s probably not really a huge problem, but I don’t want his fleece ruined. You can already tell his rump is starting to mat a little. Any ideas?
Signed,
Having a Bad Hair Day
Dear Bad Hair,
It is hard to watch animals work things out. Frequently if not always when young males are weaned one of them will emerge as the dominant animal and can make life miserable for one or another of the animals in the group. Leadership is stressful so don’t assume that the top dog is having an easier time than the underlings! Bottom line you can’t control the behavior of young males that live together unless you plan to relocate to the barn! Your choices are to allow them to establish their own order or to separate them into ever-smaller groups when they begin to act out. In all likelihood when you take the aggressive one out of the mix another one will emerge to take his place. Maintaining a number of individual paddocks rapidly becomes a management issue and it is appropriate for males to live together. A wonderful way to avoid to solve this problem is to make a practice of weaning young males into a paddock with an older bigger confident no-nonsense gelding who will be the automatic leader of the group. A gelding llama can also be a good herd leader. It is a wonderful role for a gelding and I think is much better emotionally for the young males. An older gelding will maintain order and will be the leader so that one of the youngsters does not have to assume this role at such a tender age.
Hope this helps.
Marty
Hi Marty -
I have a young male alpaca (about 2 years old) who has suddenly started going after one of my geldings. I understand that his hormones might be raging right now but why a gelding? My males are generally a sweet, docile group. There hasn’t been any breeding going on and this guy has not been used for breeding. The only thing that has changed recently is that they’ve all been shorn. The gelding is a suri and had a big two year fleece on him so he looks very different now.
I gave the fighter a time-out for a couple of days and I’ve moved all of them
away from the girls but when I tried to return him to the group this
morning he immediately started up again. We have not removed his fighting teeth so I’m hesitant to just let them fight, but I REALLY don’t want to have to create another group. If I decide to geld him it won’t be for several months.
Any ideas?
Passionate in the Pasture
Dear
Passionate, I think you are probably on target that the shearing has something to do with it. I don’t know if it is so much the change in the appearance of the gelding…I think all the boys feel better, have more energy and feel more like mixing it up with all that fleece off! In my experience males often pick on geldings so that part doesn’t surprise me. I think it is a good idea to move the boys away from the girls but the “time out” is probably not going to help. When you take an animal away from a group and then return that same animal even an hour later he or she almost always has to submit to a thorough inspection and re-establish his or her place in the herd. When and if you put this male back in with the group you should expect some fighting as he reminds the others of his place in the group. Taking him in and out repeatedly is only going to” keep the kettle boiling” so to speak.
In any case all adult males (over 2-3 years of age) should have their fighting teeth removed. The ideal time to remove them is when you geld however since you haven’t decided for sure yet to geld this male removing the teeth is not a huge procedure. You could have the veterinarian come out, lightly sedate the whole group of boys check and remove all the teeth that present a danger and then put them all in together again. If you haven’t checked the teeth yourself do that first, depending on the ages you may not even have a problem with the teeth quite yet.
I do have a few considerations to make the process of reintroducing the group easier.
1. Is the space large enough? Keeping too many animals in too small a space can amp up the tension and the fighting.
2. How many feed/shade and watering areas do you have? Perhaps as important as the size of the enclosure is how it is configured. Alpacas shouldn’t have to compete for limited resources or the animals lowest in the peck order will suffer. Make sure that you have enough shade, watering stations and hay/grain feeders so that the animals can all partake of these things at the same time. I have heard the rule of thumb 12 inches of space at a hay feeder for each animal. I think this is a huge underestimation. A single alpaca can protect three feet of feeder space. All alpacas should be able to eat in peace. One bully can effectively guard a single door to the only shady place. A barn overhang or pop up shader from a discount department store might solve this problem. Multiple vitamin/mineral stations and waterers are also a good idea.
Once
you put the boys back together
(the cool of the evening is best) keep an eye on them but expect
fireworks. You must always use your own best judgment of course
but if none of the males are significantly smaller than the others and
you can stand the noise and there is no bloodletting it might be best
to let them work it out. Good Luck,
Marty
Print
this page©Webmaster