What to Consider When Setting Up your Alpaca Farm

- Small, square bales (about 60 lbs each) - The small bales will fit above your stalls and they are easy to handle, so many alpaca farms use them. However, baling them requires manual labor and as rural populations around the country decline, it becomes more difficult for hay growers to find workers to help put up those bales.

Also, consider that the most important aspect to the alpaca owner, when it comes to buying hay, is finding a grower who is reliable, and who has consistent,high quality hay. We recommend that you do not limit your barn set up to only accommodating small bales as you will find it discouraging to finally locate a grower you like and then have to pass because he has something other than small bales!

-  Large, square bales (about 500 lbs each) – This is what we get and there are certainly some cons to these bales, but to our point above, we love the hay we get every year from our grower and this is the only size he offers, so we’ve learned to make the best of them. The advantage to growers is they don’t need manual labor to help them put up the bales. The advantage to the livestock user is that they maximize storage space given that they are square. At 500 lbs, they do require a tractor (with a spear) to put them in the storage area, and you will want at least some, at any given time, near your animals on the main floor. They come apart in flakes, just like the small bales, and we generally find standing them on end is best for easily peeling of the individual flakes. Some farms we know with larger groups of animals will put one whole bale out at a time and just let the animals work it down over a matter of weeks. Again, though, if you think you might want to do that, make sure your stalls can accommodate a tractor as you will not be able to move these into the stall yourself!

-  Round bales (about 1200 lbs each). - These are most common for farms that grow hay for their own livestock consumption. Because these bales are round, they do not transport efficiently, nor do they store efficiently, and as a result, growers who sell the majority of their hay don’t generally use this type of bale. The size of the round bales can actually be reduced from 1200 lbs, so if you have someone nearby who bales hay for themselves and you think their hay is of good quality, you might want to suggest that they produce a few small round bales for your operation.

-  Feed Storage - We keep our feed in old freezers that our local appliance store was looking to get rid of. These freezers keep the mice out, keep the feed dry, and they can hold a goodly amount of feed at one time. The latter point is significant to the extent that buying feed in bulk saves money. So plan to make room for some means of clean storage.

-  In our small barn, we have actual horse stalls – the barn is 36’ x 48’, and on either side, we have a stall that is 12’ x 24’. So, large enough for a small herd of animals to move around. We also have two 12’ x 12’ stalls on either side. One of those stalls is used for our feed and hay, and the other is used as a breeding stall and/or for newly arriving alpacas. The stalls are fully enclosed and have sliding doors to contain the animals evenmore, if we want. Most often, we leave the doors open and simply use gates so the animals can see into the aisle way. The primary “pro” to this arrangement is that for males, we can reduce their visibility to the girls (cuts down on fighting), and we can contain a male in a stall when we bring a girl in for breeding. Some males get rather worked up when the female enters the area, and having substantial walls to your stalling area will give youpiece of mind that your guy is safe. The “con” is that the animals don’t have good visibility into the rest of the barn on a day to day basis. Because these are prey animals, they like to know everything that is going on around them, and we find that the animals we keep in these stalls are a bit more “jumpy” when we enter the barn. Also, alpaca visitors cannot readily see into the stalls.

-  In our large barn, the wooden portion of each wall is lower and the animals have greater visibility out, while visitors have greater visibility in, which is a “pro”. Each stall is 15’ x 15’ and we have two stalls on either side of the barn. The “con” is that males jumping up would have a greater likelihood of getting a foot caught between the bars, and the males have been known to break the gate latches, etc.

- We have a designated breeding area in each barn. Some of our males are very easy going with the girls and we can readily bring them up to the large barn. However, as mentioned before, for those males that get worked up, we tend to rely on the more substantive stalling of our small barn. Overall, we would recommend that if you only have one barn, that you designate one stall for breeding and make sure that the enclosure is sturdy, with wooden walls and doors. For the rest of the barn, having anopen air environment will allow the alpacas to feel more comfortable and secure in their surroundings.

A couple of other important features to stalling that we should mention:

-  Flooring – we have concrete floors in both barns and just love them. They are easy to clean, they keep the animals cool in the summer, and perhaps best of all, most of our alpacas keep their nails worn down walking on the concrete for even limited periods of time each day. In the winter, we put down plenty of straw bedding to allow for warmth. The only “con” we have seen is with one of our older females. She spent almost her entire summer standing in front of a large fan in the barn, and with no give on the floor, she appeared pretty stiff by August! We have a drain in each stall in our small barn and only a slightly sloped floor in the large barn that sends the water outside. We would recommend the drains – they prevent the water from flowing outside and creating a muddy mess just outside the barn door.

Note: Some farms we’ve been to use crushed limestone. We use that in our overhang area, but really try to keep it to a minimum. We have found that the limestone works its way into their fiber, and wreaks havoc on it – drying it out, reducing luster, etc.

-  Feeding troughs  – For feeding grain, we use PVC pipes, cut in half and screwed into the walls. The important “take away” on grain feeders is to make sure you have enough of them. When alpacas feel squeezed into a small eating area, they are more likely to eat too fast and end up choking, which can be a real problem for these animals. Giving them room to spread out and feel that they have an eating area of their own will reduce possible trouble. For hay, we have hay troughs attached to one wall in each stall. Oursare low to the ground and have a small grill area on the front of the trough for crias to eat from. However, we have seen a number of good ideas for hay feeders – very tall feeders with dowel rods that allow the alpacas to pull hay out readily,free standing hay feeders, etc. Be sure to look at each farm’s feeding system when you visit as there are lots of ingenious ideas that people have come up with that may work best for you.

- Barn Overhangs – These are absolutely critical in our opinion. With fencing place around the vertical support beams, these overhangs allow you to keep your alpacas in during rain, snow, andice, while allowing them fresh air and sunlight. We generally pen our animals into smaller spaces during the winter months and take away their access to the fields. Having the enclosed overhangs, along with access to the stalled areas inside, allows us to give the alpacas plenty of space and yet not worry about them when we are away!

- Scale – regardless of the type of operation you have, you will want a scale. And you will need to think about where you put it. Weighing your animals periodically (or often if they are crias!) will tell you a great deal about their health and the quality of their fiber. Skinny animals are usually victims of parasites, fat animals usually “blow out” their average micron level and devalue the fleece. You will want to place the scale somewhere where the animals are comfortable. We have ours in a corner of one of the stalls and the alpacas don’t like it. Many people put the scale in a more open area and allow the little ones to stand on it throughout the day as a matter of course. This allows them to getuse to it early in life so it is not such a big ordeal when they get older. We do like having our scale in the corner as it is easier for us to weigh the little ones. We also have ours in the pen with the nursing dams and crias as the latter group is the one we weigh most often.

- Alpaca Chute – we waited several years to make this purchase, and now we don’t know how we lived without it! A chute is expensive, but it will save you time, human injuries, and aggravation. But think about where to put your chute. There are a few different models, but typically the sides of the chute swing open, so you need to have at least six feet on either side to open the panels. Additionally, you will want to have enough room to walk the animal in from the rear of the chute, and enough room in front of the chute to have access to their heads. Overall we recommend an area that is 14’ x 10’.