Like much of the country we've had a bit of a heat wave here. While temps are now back to more of a normal range (80's rather than 90+ degrees), it's still been humid and not very comfortable out there. The alpacas manage in the heat, but we make sure they have plenty of fresh cool water, fans to sit in front of, and we hose them off several times a day. In their native climate in South America they don't have temps this high and definitely not this humid.
One thing we don't like to do in the heat is breedings. Males can overheat and even become sterile in some cases. So we've been holding off on spit testing and re-breding any girl who is open. The down side to this is that we may end up with some late summer or even early fall due dates next year (since their gestation last about 11.5 months, if we breed in August/September, we'll have cria born in August/September next year). We really don't like cria born that late, given how cold it can get here in the fall months. It's hard to keep a young cria warm. But, mother nature isn't giving us much of a choice this year.
I love long summer days. I love the sun. I love the warmth. But even I have been struggling this past week. The first few really warm days I enjoyed, but it seems we haven't had a break back to normal temps in weeks. Just like the alpacas lay around on these hot summer days, I seem to be doing similar.
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