Yes they do spit.

It is used as a warning sign between Alpacas most of the time. It is especially prevalent around feeding time, as there is a pecking order for who eats first and if a young alpaca has jumped in before a senior member of the herd they will be spat at. At KINGSVIEW ALPACAS I have been spat on numerous occasions over the years because I got in between two alpacas determining who was the boss at feed time.

If an alpaca is threatened by a human, I have found they will spit only if they cannot get away (the flight or fight theory).  This is easily managed by you in understanding what is threatening to your alpacas.

Alpaca Spit generally is not pleasant, however once dry is easily brushed off. The more you are around your alpacas the better understanding of who is the boss, who is a spitter and most importantly you will identify a spitting incident before it happens.

Alpacas require the company of other alpacas, therefore you should buy a minimum of two alpacas. You may be buying a herd guard for sheep in which case the alpaca will bond with the sheep.

Alpacas require shade and a clean water supply in their paddock. If the pasture is inadequate you will need to supply additional feed such as hay and lucerne hay (for example) or other hard feeds.

Alpacas require shearing once a year, you will need to find a shearer that services your area, or find somewhere you can take them to be shorn. Ask the breeder about a shearing contact when you purchase the alpaca.

Maintenance of your alpacas will include trimming toenails, vaccinations throughout the year and other miscellaneous issues (health, accidents, birthing). Ask the breeder about any assistance or training that they can provide when you purchase the alpaca.

At KINGSVIEW ALPACAS we provide all new breeders who purchase an alpaca with the advice (and hands on training if required) on how to maintain your alpacas throughout the seasons of the year.

At Kingsview Alpacas we try to halter train all of our alpacas at weaning around the 6 months of age.  As the herd grows this task is made less achievable, the reason is simple, time.  You only have so much time to give to your business/love of alpacas.

Our solution is to give them all some handling from the time they are born until weaning, during the weaning period (for us that's approximately 2 weeks initially) handle and at least introduce a halter.  That handling will pay dividends for years when vaccinations and toe nails need to trimming.

The show team get the works, added to the handling they go on to being lead, get used to a pen for a period of time, being held and touched on various parts of their body (to desensitise) and further work for show preparation.

In the end, it comes down to a cost (time) benefit (future stress) analysis for your own alpaca stud.

Its been a quick turn around, we tried to keep the website clean and simple as the main reason for the website initially is to let the punters know what alpacas we have for sale.

The KINGSVIEW ALPACAS WEBSITE has gone live at 9.30pm however there are two pages that still need to update and go live being the stud service and for sale pages which are creatively imbedded from the ALPACA SELLER website.  That is where I upload all of the photos and detail of the alpacas for sale.

We have been involved in alpacas now for 4 years, I would have to say one of the youngest (in age) breeders in the industry, therefore you could easily expect that we would have embraced technology and had a website sooner.

Well, with the pressure of our usual jobs along with a toddler and another on the way, time passes you by as you attend to all of your responsibilities.  I purchased the domain name 3 years ago and it was only 2 weeks ago that I finally drafted the content for a website along with some photos.

I was after a simple and sleek website that cut straight to the chase, what alpacas to do have for sale and what is our pedigree as alpaca breeders.  I hope that the website has conveyed what we are all about as it is one of the most cost effective forms of marketing that I can think of.

I received the draft today and was instantly impressed, I looked at it 2 hours later and was still impressed, I know that its not perfect and that it just needs something more, but for the life of me I cannot pinpoint exactly what needs to change to go from 95% to 100%.  I will let the missus have a look and make some comments.

That was where the glory ended, I woke up with a stomach that would not allow me drink water without instantly throwing it all back up.  It was touch and go there for awhile if I would partake in the second days events...looking back I know the reason for the stomach upset...motion sickness.  I have always been soft when it comes to motion sickness (can feel the sicklyness just thinking about).

I sucked it up for the team and as every other competitor roared out of camp to get more photos we were sitting around the campfire getting a great lesson on how to use a GPS and more importantly how to plot waypoints into the GPS, thanks Hobeezy!!!

Today we learnt a lesson on how to be competitive, a lesson I will not forget for next time.  We drove around for 3 hors and found three photos (thats worth 60 points), yet we could have been doing courses B or C that were worth 300 points each and as we later found out could be done in 2 to 3 hours.  We handed our camera in for 60 points at 1pm and went to do course B with 3 hours to go.

We started at a GPS reference point and had to follow a stick map (no its not a stick book!!!) on a course for about 2 hours.  It was all going great till someone said over the UHF "this is too easy" and the next 45 minutes found us lost and unable to work where we were on the map.  Needless to say we had some luck got back on the track with the right map instruction and we were away...course completed with 35 mins to get back to camp.

Along the way back we came across some young blokes on the main road who said they were bogged and no one would help them.  Rod swiftly explained we were in a competition and that is why most had not stopped.  We got them to jump in the back and I said hang on tight (the seats were stripped out of the rear) and Rod planted the foot throwing the blokes back into the cargo barrier where they stayed for the 2 min trip to their vehicle.

We arrived in a cloud of dust to be greeted by a stock Hilux ute with road tyres in a bog that we had driven through the previous day with 36inch boggers.  Snatch strap was out and the vehicles connected...clear! clear! and bang the hilux was snatched out on its belly (he was in deep).  Rod and I were gone in a flash before the thank you's.  I reminded Rod that in future maybe he should snatch a little slower to avoid chassis damage to other vehicles!!!

We made it back to camp in time, handed in the evidence of our stick map navigation and eagerly awaited the results.  A surprise to no one was the fact that we came 9th out of 11.  Sounds good on the first attempt will there were 2 DNFs.  All in all a good time was had by all and we will be doing another NAVRUN soon.

We were off on our first NAVRUN and the excitement was high.  As I was now the navigator as I hand plotted the points on the map I was in for a steep learning curve.  The reason was that within the general area that I believed the reference point was there were two tracks, however I did not realise how inaccurate hand plots could be until we spent an hour driving up and down the track wondering why the GPS would never get really close to the reference point.  In my wisdom I studied the full GPS reference points and consulted the GPS (that was operated by the other navi in the other car) and decided to give another track running parallel to the current track ago.

Spot on, what a genius I thought and half up the track we found our competitors at the exact reference point taking their photo.  We took our photo and celebrated our success by sitting on the side of the road and I rechecked all of my previous hand plotted references for accuracy.  One down and 17 more to go.  As we sped off within the speed limit on the way to our next way point, we stumbled on other teams taking photos at reference points that we could not convert onto the map and sneakily waited and picked up some bonus photos.  In all we picked up 4 bonus photos along with the another 15 that we found from the map over the remaining 7 hours.

We cruised back to base camp and handed in our camera with 5 mins to spare.  The camp fire was raging and the fridge was opened instantly upon parking.  Let the amber goodness flow as we discussed the highlights of the day and amazed our fellow competitors with the large number of photos we achieved by manually using the map.  Night set in, we cooked up the snags in bread and retold our story of success to anyone who would listen with the help of a few cans.  Gotta love sleeping in a swag under a clear sky!