Alpacas on Pasture

It's so nice to see the alpacas out in their pasture and not holed up in the barn. The grass isn't green yet, but it will soon be. I love that they are soaking up sunshine. In South America (Peru, Bolivia, Chile) they are at a higher elevation and nearer the sun. I always worry they aren't getting enough Vitamin D here.
☼ I shot this picture off my deck with the zoom. They are three acres away.

....and here we have little JR in his spring turtleneck. I think that if the weather continues to be so nice, he can go coatless. Although I dread thinking what his fleece is going to be like. He's so little that all the others eat over top of him and all the VM falls down on his neck and back.

Yesterday I had to drive to Jackson to pick up alpaca feed. This is Kathy and Lew Kukla, our alpaca mentors, who own Luka's Alpaca Ranch. They have become the very bestest friends imaginable. They order several tons of our feed twice a year for several of us alpaca breeders, then we go pick it up, get to visit, and catch up.

☼ Hey, that's the van that I traded the truck and Trailblazer for. I can haul alpacas and feed in it fine. Lots easier that the big clunky horse trailer. I did worry a little on our hour and a half drive home. It drove differently loaded with 1080 pounds of feed. Lew checked the air in my tires before we left and sort of assured us (neighbor Billie and me) that we would be ok.

Here are the 27 forty pound bags of feed in my arena. It's always so much easier to unload. Billie helped me and it was a piece of cake. Now it all gets dumped in to garbage bins so that it stays clean and rodents can't nibble into it.

The feed is called Pac-A-Nutrition that we order through Knoblocks in Kansas. We all believe that this is the very best nutrition that we can provide our alpacas - besides, it's pretty much choke free (which is a nasty problem with alpacas).