Alpaca Farm

As organizer of the toddler playgroup that Alton and I belong to, I am always looking for ideas and suggestions of activities that break us out of our usual haunts. South of our house, a particular country road always winds me past the Northwest Alpacas Farm, one of the larger (or possibly largest) alpaca farms in the area, and when I contacted them about a tour for our group they were game! They don't have any kind of regularly scheduled public tours (most of their visitors are potential buyers of the alpaca, which are bred for their fiber and sheared every year like sheep to make yarn and clothing), so one of the employees at the ranch gave us some off-the-cuff sound bites and history on alpacas, breeding in the U.S., and what their business is about.
Below you see Alton (in the red hat) and *P (wearing the grey fleece vest I made her for Christmas!) with friends, excited to check out these poofy animals. The little guy in the upper right of the picture is Alton's buddy *F, who came up with Elizabeth and big sis *B from Newberg to see this tour!
All the kids were carooming around the dusty driveway and peering through the wire fence, which looked out onto the large front field that is reserved for the pregnant mothers.

We actually spent quite a while staring into this pen, because one of the mama alpacas was in labor and about to give birth. We learned that female alpacas do not need assistance or privacy when the baby is being born; they are content to just walk, lie, and roll around the field while they are in labor amongst their fellow preggo alpaca girlfriends, then drop the little one right there on the grass and hang out next to him until he's ready to walk! It was at a bit of a distance, but still very cool to see this completely silent mother alpaca have her baby right out in the open.

The very first "nursery" pen in front of us held a couple of mother alpacas with very young babies. The fluffy little guy lying down in the photo below is only one day old!

Then we did a little walking around the rest of the ranch. We went over to a pen where some of the younger alpacas are kept together. This group is so young that the male and female alpacas do not need to be kept separate from one another as they will in adulthood. All of the alpacas are tagged on the ear with a number so that the employees can keep track of them: right ear for boys, left ear for girls.
Alton looks through the fence at the alpaca teenagers, and they rush right up with curious faces to greet the visitors.

Once we stepped inside the pen, however, they were shy!

After some nudging and "You go first!"-ing, they ambled gawkily up to us and took turns daring each other to sniff us.

Fred, our tour guide, brought out a bucket of alpaca feed (it looked like those alfalfa pellets you get at petting zoos, although a little less stinky) and said that we could put it in our hands and offer it to the alpacas! But patient and still as we were, they never took the bait--too shy! Fred said that the older alpacas would be gobbling it down. We learned that alpacas are "flight animals," which means they will turn and flee if you approach them too quickly, and that they do not have upper front teeth, so they cannot really bite.
Karen held out a handful of feed to the alpacas while *P urgently ferried more and more pellets to her palm from the bucket.

Alton really, really wanted the alpacas to eat the food in his hand and tried to stand still while Auntie Karen showed him how to hold his fingers out flat, but the alpacas just snuffed and shied away. I really wonder what he would have done if one had actually eaten from his hand!

We left there with Alton full of talk about the alpacas. This afternoon I was sitting with him in a waiting room that had toys out for kids, including a few animal figures. He was placing all the animals inside of a big red van, and I think he surprised the pants off of most of the people nearby when he held up one of the figurines and said, "It's an alpaca!" (It was a reindeer, but still.)