Poor Poor Pitiful Wet Alpacas

Those of you living in Western Oregon know how much rain we have had this winter. Those of you living elsewhere have doubtless heard how badly Northern California is getting pounded by storms. If you take a two-second look at the weather map describing the pounding by said storms, you will notice that the media and the population may be centered in Northern California, but the storms are centered north of the border. Specifically, the storms are focused on the central latitudes of Western Oregon.

Just ask our alpacas about the rain.


Del (left), Percy (right) and the rest of the boys looking wet and miserable -- pleading to come in out of the rain. Not! Del and Percy are checking out the camera to see if it contains pellets.

The truth is they are wet on the surface, but not at the skin. They look skinny because the rain has dampened their normally fluffy fiber.

The begging, however, is for their beloved and tasty pellets, not for shelter. They don't like the rain and they'd prefer not to be out in the rain, but they have dry sheds and plenty of hay. They just don't have enough pellets.



Ipo doing her best to look wet and pitiful as Anna looks on. She'd really like us to take pity on her and let her into the shed where the pellets are.



Little Maggee and the other girls are milling around outside the gate to the shed. Just listen to them tell you how awful the rain is when the pellets are in the shed.

The girls have two areas in their shed and they seem to be able to all get out of the rain quite comfortably. They share their shelter fairly readily.



They boys do have a legitimate complaint about the muddy moat they must wade through to get to their shed, but once in the shed, they have a nice, dry, raised floor. The problem is the boys tend to look on the shed as an oversized hay bin which must be defended against all interlopers. They don't share their shelter very well unless it's really pouring.



The alpacas will tell you how pitiful and wet they are -- just ask them at feeding time.

To be totally honest, our pastures are a muddy mess and the high traffic areas are sodden swamps. We've got ditches dug to channel water away from the sheds to keep them dry. We've had storms stacked up off the Oregon Coast like airplanes at O'hare since Christmas with no end in sight. The outer layer of fiber on our animals has probably been wet for three weeks at this point and we're going to lose some fiber to felting. We're not enjoying our trips outside to take care of the animals. We know from their behavior the alpacas are have some cabin fever and they're tired of hay -- we see them staying out to graze in ever heavier rain even though the hay bins are full. That's the downside.

The upside is, the animals are healthy. Despite the nasty weather, our animals are healthy and basically in good shape. They're plenty warm. They're dry at the skin. The rain probably doesn't bother them nearly as much as watching them stand in the rain bothers us. Oh, they know how to play on our pity at feeding time, but they're not in bad shape.

Just don't ask them when they think you might have pellets.