KINGSVIEW ALPACA'S SPACE

It has been noted that Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban have bought 4 alpacas after visiting an Alpaca Stud near their home in NSW.  Now celebrities are in on the act!

http://lovelynicolekidman.com/article.asp?articleid=49351

The attached picture/article was taken from the weekend paper.  At first glance it’s a funny photo.  After thinking about it, the effort that went into cutting the poodle like features would have been time consuming and possibly distress to the animal.  I am left pondering if there will be any lasting physical effects to the alpaca due to the fleece retained around the neck.

Last week I took my first drive down the end of my road that was devastated entirely by the bushfires.  It was in total contrast to my end of the road where only paddock fires and minimal tree fire damage occurred.  To see treed blocks totally void of life, destroyed out buildings and depending on people’s luck they may have still had a house.

Scorched paddocks and trees void of foliage were the landscape for as far as the eye could see, this landscape will be with me physically and mentally for many years.

After seeing the devastation first hand, I was again greeted at the front gate of KINGSVIEW ALPACAS with the sweet vision of a new cria in the paddock.  A lovely fawn boy with striking colour features and an extremely soft handling fleece.  The challenge is out to find a suitable name.  

What a month and a half leading up to “Black Saturday”…no rain…a full week of 40 degree plus days.  Our property at KINGSVIEW ALPACAS had some long and very dry grass around it, added to that six weeks of non-maintenance due to the extreme heat and other domestic factors.

You have heard it all before, all the factors were there and you know the devastating result.  Our property at KINGSVIEW ALPACAS was extremely lucky compared to others in the area.  We evacuated at the suggestion of the CFA, as we had no fire fighting equipment, and left our house, our alpacas and our property in their hands.

We were able back to look at the property approximately 36 hours after the tragedy to find our house, alpacas and property unburnt.  The CFA were able to stop a 750m grass fire front on our boundary fence after the heli-tanker stopped in from the air and dropped a load of water on our house for good measure.  Our property is now the border for the fire break that has subsequently been made by the CFA as a precautionary measure around the fires perimeter in our area.

It was six days before we received our electricity back (many still haven’t 2 weeks later) and as we drove down our charcoaled and baron road and pulled up to our gate, we noticed something new amongst the alpacas, with an instant smile we new things were about to start getting better as we had that glimmer of hope that you get from new life.  A male cria, with a beautiful dark fawn colouration, his name is Smokey.  He will make a great pet and be a reminder to us to keep our chins up as our community works its way through this tragedy.

In Melbourne this week the weather has been consistently in the 40 degree range, which got me thinking, earlier in the day, how do our alpacas withstand not only the heat but the hot wind that goes with it?

On our property at KINGSVIEW ALPACAS during the summer months we run three mobs of alpacas, the females, the males in two groups with the stud males split up. 

I considered the plight of the females especially, some have cria a foot from the spring season (rehydrating not only themselves but a cria) and the pregnant females that are due in Autumn (who are carrying around the extra weight).  I have visited them a number of times a day and observed that they cleverly (and upon observation seemed an obvious thing to do) sat amongst the mini pine plantation most of the day, staying out of direct sunlight and also out of the wind and only made their way to the dam when necessary.   It wasn’t until the evening that they went out in the paddock to graze and feed.

The key to this kind of weather is some form of natural shelter where possible and keep on eye out for some of the more vulnerable alpacas.