We have had very unseasonably warm weather. For the last few days we have been breaking record high temps (and the nights have stayed quite warm for us too). While I love the warmth and sunshine, alpacas don't do as well in the heat. They actually manage the cold better than the heat. Add on that it's very warm (hitting the 80's) and they haven't been shorn yet, and you have some miserable animals. (In a typical year we shear before this type of weather hits). In fact this past weekend we thought one of our pregnant girls was going to go into premature labor.
We cool them down with fans running in the barn, and spraying cold water on their chest/belly area. Zack loves to take on this job:
After hosing them off he tried to go fill their water buckets. They followed:
And they pestered him to spray them more:
Zack loves doing this job and yesterday I discovered why. Not only does he get to get wet himself, but when the alpacas get real close to him so that he can spray them with the very cold water, he sneaks in and gives them a hug! Such a sweet boy :)
2 comments:
We've had the same weather here. It is hard on the alpacas in full fleece. There is still ice under the waste hay that has mounded around our hay feeders over the winter, so the girls have been kushing down on that to keep cool. Smart girls, they are! We expect more normal temperatures next week.
Same here in NE MI. We had to hose them down and they also had been cushing on the hay with ice under it. Now we have normal temps again and new grass sprouting up in their pastures. We have let them out to nibble. Oh are they so happy!
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