Underweight Alpaccas

Hi Everyone,

We acquired 6 alpacas a few years ago (although you never really OWN an alpaca).  Today we sheared them and noticed that a few of them were quite underweight. I was shocked as this has not been a problem in previous years and the extra rain has promoted seemingly good grass growth. I talked to the shearer about it (he's teaching me) and he said that even though the grass looks great, it has a lot more water and may be nutritionally poor this year. He suggested supplementing their diet  with cracked corn, carrots and apples. He advised to go light on with the apples though as they might have a laxative effect. Has anyone experienced this? I'm thinking of supplementing their diet to get their weight back up with a mix of alpaca or pony pellets which they are familiar with with some cracked corn and maybe a few carrots to start with but I've offered them carrots before and they ignored them.

Hi Peter, and welcome! I'd suspect intestinal parasites ("worms") if they're eating well and the feed is decent quality. There are commercial anthelmintic drenches and I hate to use them or advise others to go down that path, because they mess up the animal's gut biome and, worst of all, they never eliminate all the worms and the ones that survive pass on their genes. Voila: drench-resistant parasites. It's become an arms race here, especially with sheep.

We had alpacas for 18 years and had very minor worm burdens. The best thing you can do is prevent them from building up by rotating the animals and resting paddocks longer between grazing. Most stock parasites need live hosts within a certain time frame to maintain their reproductive cycle, and if they wait too long they die out because they can't travel very far on their own.

Feeding hay can help, with the extra roughage pushing things along. Feeding tree branches like willow is very beneficial because of the condensed tannins, which the worms don't like. Some legumes have lots of condensed tannins too. Biochar is pretty amazing for controlling parasites...we have seen egg counts drop to zero in weaner cattle that were eating it daily. You can get an alpaca to eat biochar by mixing it with some molasses, lucerne chaff, and salt. This is also a blend that works for sheep. Cattle will eat it straight.

Hi Peter. I'll double down on what Phil said about parasites. I'd say that is the most likely cause and you can verify that by checking the underside of the eyelid to see how yellow it is.

https://www.bing.com/ck/a?!&&p=cc21310a7ea0cb2e6b66f7c4beb266cac975d9fb25cd7a13424e4a11bc05c6a4JmltdHM9MTcyOTkwMDgwMA&ptn=3&ver=2&hsh=4&fclid=0351a65e-78bd-6434-276f-b34579f2653c&psq=Fomacha&u=a1aHR0cHM6Ly9zbWFsbHJ1bWluYW50cy5jZXMubmNzdS5lZHUvd3AtY29udGVudC91cGxvYWRzLzIwMTMvMDQvRkFNQUNIQS1JbmZvLUd1aWRlLnBkZj9md2Q9bm8&ntb=1

FAMACHA testing (one of many links available above) will explain it a bit.

Phil also mentioned about rotating your pastures. There is an effective way to do this, and there are many ineffective ways to do this. For starters, you can't leave the alpacas on the pasture any longer than the time it takes for the larvae to hatch from an egg. Don't leave the alpacas on a pasture for longer than 7 days. Doing so will reinfect the alpaca. Second, once you move the alpacas off the pasture, don't bring them back to that pasture any sooner than the maximum life expectancy of the intermediate stage of the parasite/worm. I believe that is 21 days, but I recommend a rotation interval of 28 days. Using the 7 days on maximum and the 28 days off as a minimum, that means you need a minimum of 5 separate pastures to rotate your alpacas through. Double check the time intervals for the life cycles I used above as it has been awhile since I have referenced these in my mind and I may be wrong necessitating either a shorter amount of time grazing a pasture or a longer interval after leaving a pasture and before returning.

Another aspect to consider is that parasite larvae tend to confine their selves to the bottom two inches of grasses/forage plants. If you move the alpacas out of the pasture before they have shortened/eaten the forages to a height less than 3 inches (healthier for the grass as well) this will lessen the parasite load further in your alpacas.