I recently bought a 9 year old male alpaca named Bracken. He seem quite friendly when I looked at him in his home ranch. He walks up to humans a puts his nose out to sniff. When he is in a paddock, he does tend to stand on his back legs and rest his front feet on the fence, but her doesn't aggressively challenge a fence. When I drove to pick him up, he was easy to halter, but did not want to get into the trailer. He had to be lifted into the trailer for transport, because no amount of food or other enticements would get him into the trailer. When I got him home, he was easy to unload, walked right into the pasture, and let me remove his halter. My problem when I tried to introduce Bracken to the other two males. My boy Osiris was fine with the new guy, but Cupid was not and has chased Bracken and tried to bite him. I separated Cupid out of the group for 24 hours to give them time out. Bracken who outweighs Cupid by a good 40 pounds runs away and will not engage in a fight. When I reintroduced Cupid, yesterday, he began chasing after Bracken. I thought they would sort it out, but instead Bracken has begun to act out by charging at the humans who come near the pens and jumping up on his back legs. He ran at a fence this morning and took our part of the fence. I think the behavior is more fear that overt aggression, but I can't have a large male who runs at me when I enter his pen, and I would like to know if there is a chance to shift the behavior. I spoke to the previous owner this morning and he said that Bracken will run up to people, but has never done so aggressively.
