Since we put up the second shelter in the winter, we were not able to adjust the fencing. The original barn not only has the pasture fenced in, but has a paddock and a catch pen. The purpose of the catch pen is to assist in "catching" the alpacas so that we can halter them. The catch pen has one openning, and is a small area so that the alpaca has no where to run. The idea behind it is that you can grab at the alpaca in that pen, but not outside of the pen so that they feel safe from being grabbed otherwise (they hate being grabbed so their feeling safe is important). The paddock is nice if we want to keep the alpaca's near the barn, like if the vet is coming, we can herd them into the paddock/barn area and close the gate so they can't get too far away. That way we do not have to chase them all over the pasture.
The ground is still somewhat frozen but we managed to get the fence up for the paddock and catch pen. Now I need to get going on halter training Sommerfield and Maddie, I've been using the excuse of too much snow on the ground and no where to halter them.
The kids were curious about what J was doing (putting up the gate), and the alpacas were curious.
the alpacas trying to figure out what we are doing:
The paddock
The Catch pen (really hard to see in a picture, it's between the paddocks. Each paddock is directly in front of the barn door, the new catch pen butts up to both paddocks):
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