Hello everyone, We think about taking a female (12-year-old) alpaca to our herd, because she has problems in her herd. First situation (Charly´s situation): This female alpaca (Charly) got babies when she was younger. Now they try to get her pregnant, but it did not work. Charly is living in a herd with 6 female alpacas. The owner often takes visitors to the pasture for having a picknick. So, the people are sitting at benches around a table for a cup of coffee or something else. Another female alpaca likes it to lay down near the visitors. And in this situation Charly tries to breed(I am not sure whether it is the right word for it …) this female one. If the owner tries to put Charly away, she does not like it, starts spitting etc. . This behaviour disturbs the owner, and it is too dangerous, because there are kids in the pasture, as well. Can anyone explain the behaviour doing this only if people are on the pasture? My analysis: In the forum I read something about a female alpaca with a similar behaviour. Somebody wrote, that females, which would like to be pregnant, but which are not pregnant try to breed with other female alpacas. So, my first thought was: It was a good idea to try getting her pregnant. But it does not work. - So, maybe she has some health problems that she does not get pregnant. This should be checked by a veterinarian. - If she is healthy, change the arrangement: - put her and another alpaca on another pasture if there are visitors on the pasture. - put her into a herd without (so many) visitors. But I do not understand WHY she is doing this behaviour only if visitors are in the pasture. The owner wants to purchase her. So, we consider taking her to our herd, because I am scared that the becomes an alpaca, which get many different owners, because of her behaviour BUT, we have a similar situation on our herd, so I do not know whether it would be a good decision or not. Second situation (our situation): We have a mixed herd (two female and four gelded alpacas). We take some of them from the breeder because of a handicap (the female alpacas had too much complication during giving birth, one gelded one has only one eye, …). All in all, it is a very harmonic herd. The only problem is that one gelded male alpaca (13 year old) tries to breed with one of our females (he was gelded when he was two years old). I read in the forum that there are two reasons why he is doing that: He reminds of a well smelling female as he was an intact male one or it is a kind of habit. Interesting is, that he is only doing this if people come to the pasture that he does not know or when we come home from a walk. Our veterinarian said, that it does not hurt our female one or that she seems to be very stressed. Same here as in the first situation: Can anybody explain, why he is doing this only in these two situations? All in all, we consider taking Charly to our herd. We do not have so many visitors on our pasture. Sometimes friends, but then, if she shows this behaviour, we will take the time to change the arrangement before. Maybe our gelded male and Charly will complement? Or do you think it is better for this animal to go to a female herd? So many question and sorry for the long text. Maybe here are people in the forum, who had experiences with similar situations and can give me an advice. Cheers Alex
