Back to the Farmyard

It has been awhile since I was last in the Farmyard.  All the changes that the animal department has had for the past few months has kept me in Explore the Wild most of the time.  Last week, I got to go back to the Farmyard.  It was great to see all of the farmyard animals and catch myself up on the duties of farmyard keeping. Keeper Jill helped me reacquaint myself with the Farmyard tasks plus gave me someRead more
3 Comments

The Quick Difference Between Alpaca and Llamas

A lot of the times when I am in the farmyard and next to our new Alpaca exhibit, I get asked whats the difference between an Alpaca and Llama. EARS: Photo   Photo SIZE   Image Even though they are in the same family Camelidae, they are used for different purposes by humans. Alpacas are used for their fibers and Llama are used as pack animals to carry things or in meat production. Some llamas are bred genetically for differentRead more
2 Comments

Alpaca Pool

Recently, we added a pool to our alpacas yard. We had a good feeling that they would use it because we kept finding a lot of dirt in their water buckets and evidence of water being splashed around. It took a while to be able to capture it on film, but we finally did.   [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpyxNSOpXBs[/youtube]  Read more
7 Comments

Naked Alpacas

We used to have naked sheep once a year- check out last year’s sheep shearing. The four of them lost about 21 pounds of wool. Much less than the 35 pounds the 4 sheep took off last year This is our first year shearing alpacas and today was the day. They no longer look like this:   Jonathan lays the alpacas down, straightens them out, and ties their legs. It goes pretty quickly and easily.   We’ll get some video andRead more