My wife wants Alpacas. Do Alpacas have the kind of multiple permaculture benefits that other animals do. If so, please enlighten me!
I recon they do! They produce good fibre! they can sometimes act as flock protecters (depending on attitude) They poo in the same spot/ease of collection /limiting parasites good skin lots of neck chops Welcome to the forum!Where are You?? I wouldnt mind a couple of pushmepullyous myself! I have sheep I have shorn lots of them and they are quite easy to handle,They yield easily! They are much more affordable than they were a few years ago I think you can get a breeding pair for 3to500$ perhaps less! the industry seems to have failed to come up with viable markets for the fibre! Soft feet so they dont harm the soil much.
All the commercial sheep farmers down our way use alpacas to protect their sheep. You don't see a single sheep flock without an alpaca so they must work or the farmers wouldn't do it.
Alpacas and wild dogs My next door neighbours have alpacas and lose about five a night to wild dogs from the adjoining national park if they do not house them at night, they even have four guard donkeys which worked for a while. They killed and ate my maremmas too, so we all just have to spotlight and shoot, bait and trap. I get about one a week trying to break into the chicken tractor, only about 15 metres from where we sleep which is where I set the Jake and Bridger traps. They are mostly German Shepherd and Border Collie cross Dingo looking dogs here. We lost two sheep killed and eaten after dawn this morning in broad daylight after being let out of their fold and regularly have dog bitten livestock with their ears, tails and noses bitten off. One of my geldings has killed two by kicking and biting then striking them when being attacked. They regularly kill people's guard dogs in their own back yards. The National Parks and local Government here do sweet FA about it. They will probably only act when a tourist walker or someone's child gets killed and eaten I suppose. Alpacas may work for foxes, but they do not work for wild dogs here.
Wow those dogs sound like monsters! Hounds from hell! I would not like to met a dog that could kill a maremma!
that would certainly be a challenge! wow! sounds like these animals have not had the same sort of fear of humans that wolves/coyotes here in the states have. we do not have many feral dogs around, they get picked up by people and fostered out or are put down. i.e. they are pack animals and the ones that go stray tend to find a pack/people and get dealt with and i think our conditions are fairly hard during the winter that not many strays survive through the winter. oh but this does remind me of a news item a few weeks/months ago where they had a wild pack of dogs in the city that was being rather aggressive and attacking pets if they were allowed out. i'm not sure if that situation is under control by now or not -- haven't seen any recent notices/news items. locally we do not have wolves. might be a bear once in a great while, but otherwise coyotes and foxes may be around, but they are shy creatures. in all the years here i've seen a fox once and a coyote once and we are only a short distance from some woodlands. our most frequent top predator is a cat which may be one of the neighbors or it is feral.
