This is the podcast for alpaca people!

Welcome to all of you, wherever you are listening, but especially my listeners from Brazil. Thank you. I appreciate it.

Alpacas are curious and usually offer us a welcome as we approach. Depending on what we do next, the welcome remains, or our attention becomes unwelcome. Even too much staring at them and paying too much attention can cause them to retreat or at least change their body language. It is good to observe them and get to know each one individually.

At this time in the UK it is good to check body condition scores - see the video below for details

https://youtu.be/xZSlhQaqGEk?si=TOJhjuEEqexcGDm3

You might also want to check feet and eyes too.

If you can, spend some time with your alpacas, someone else's alpacas, or come spend time with my alpacas and me. You are welcome.

Thanks for listening, and I hope you enjoyed it.

You can contact me by email - [email protected] - or leave me a voicemail from your browser.

Alpaca Tribe is hosted and produced by Steve Heatherington of Waterside Voices.

[0:00] Welcome to the Alpaca Tribe. I'm Steve Hetherington. Hi, Steve here, and welcome to the podcast for Alpaca People. Great to see you again. So I've been thinking about welcomes, and I was looking at my numbers the other day for the Alpaca Tribe podcast, and i discovered that i've got a whole bunch of listeners down in in brazil and i'm welcome, Obrigado. So good to have you here, and I hope you appreciate you enjoying the podcast. I hope my English is not too fast for you. My Portuguese is pretty limited, so apologies for that, but you're welcome. And bonjour to those who are listening in France. And Croeso if you're listening in Wales and I'm running out now do you know you can see those postcards sometimes or t-shirts or whatever it is where it's a whole series of alternative.

[1:16] Language things all saying welcome and I kind of look at them and Bienvenue, or something along those lines which is probably something like Good to See You is it? Something like a literal translation anyway welcome, wherever you are wherever you're listening from i i i see you now and again as a little colored spot on my on my uh world map of who's listening and where and what you're listening with, and you're welcome so glad that you're here it makes it all worthwhile after all, coming down to the girls and giving them breakfast yes welcome i was welcomed because i was bringing food or I was going to be releasing food. I did the mucking out first. There was more of it. It's been so wet and horrible. We've had yellow warnings, amber warnings, high wind, goodness knows what. And it's a really calm, much more normal winter day today. So, yeah.

[2:18] Just take a breath. Oh, there's a bit of sun as well. That's nice. So the alpacas, they have a curiosity they they are interested and sometimes we can mistake that for a welcome sometimes it's kind of oh what's going on here who are you what are you doing, what are you up to they read your body language really well they understand what's going on, and they will they will find uh interest in what's happening and if you're going to give them food they will definitely find interest in that and there are other things then that They kind of go, oh, I don't like his hat. Sometimes they don't like my hat. I don't know what that is, but they don't. And other times, oh, it's the things that are different, isn't it? They stand out. They go, oh, that's unusual. The behavior, the timing, whatever it is, if it's unusual, then they go, oh, I'm not sure what's happening here. What's all this about? And so there's that curiosity, and the ears go up. There's all the body language stuff for you to read, which was to do with the ears, the position of the head, and the tail and watch it as they interact with each other but also how they interact with you and there are some things that you do that are not welcome and the attention you give them sometimes like with Hermione it's when I look at her too much or with too much interest oh no don't look at me I've got it and it was Hermione's daughter.

[3:47] And she was stood on the path and she was chewing the cud. It's unusual. She was moving because I think I was coming down to get in the food. But she's chewing the cud. So she's got the figure eight motion with her jaw going. And she's kind of staring at me. And then she suddenly realized I was looking back at her. That wasn't welcome. She said, oh, I need to go. I need to go. I need to go. I need to go. And off she ran down into the stable area where the food was going to be. So I mucked out. They'd been in because it's been so wet. So I had to do a bit more mucking out. Just clear some space. It's a bit easier for them to be given the food and to move around and to the different places because they do mill around as they're eating the food and yeah so I had to muck out first so, they stood a bit watching oh he's talking again that wasn't quite so welcome either just get the.

[4:39] Too much attention, particularly if you move in because you're going to touch them or handle them. You're going to deal with something whether it's a bit of bramble in the fleece or whether it's you want to check the feet out. Feet are an issue this time of year here in the UK in the winter with wet ground then the feet can get, the pads can get quite soft and you just occasionally get a problem with a thorn or something. Occasionally you get problems between the toes where you're going to get um it's damp and it's it's a bit yeah and it can get smelly and horrible and a bit bit of fungal growth or a bit of infection there so you just need to to be aware of those feet are good to check toenails they grow a bit faster when, they're on wet ground all the time who knows i have no idea but that's what happens, and so some may just need a little bit of a trim and that's worth being aware of the other thing I've noticed and that you might want to just step in and have a little look at is messy eyes the kind of mucky around the corners a little bit of it's not really infected but there's just a bit of.

[5:48] Extra mucky stuff around the eyes could be from the dust from from the hay or just whatever but it can be an indicator that they're a bit run down so it's worth worth looking at just checking there isn't an infection there.

[6:05] And then and also clear kind of clearing it off it'll it'll dry off and it'll brush off at some point anyway but uh if you're concerned it's if there's a lot it's worth having a look at and you can sometimes see a like a tear run that goes down from the eye and that's that's interesting to be aware of just in case there's there's something else going on that's eye irritation that's producing a lot more of the um of the liquid around in the eye and it's over spilling and running down the face so that that can be an indicator of some things worth just checking is yeah while you're on it you might as well if you're doing the head check down the jaw line just check for for swellings and things that there's no infection and um and everything that's going to get under the tooth and get into the to the jaw so uh it's quick and easy to do but the main thing you you really want to do at this time of year in the uk we full fleeced so it's less easy to see their body condition um it is most of the year so you need to get your hands on them and do a body condition score so that's over the the the hip area at the back there you're just checking over the spine, finger and thumb over the top, and seeing what it is that's going on.

[7:24] I'm in a different place here. It's interesting behavior. Hello, Megan, are you coming to see me?

[7:31] So I'm in a different place here and they've just walked around the corner. There's a picture on the website, so alpacatribe.com. Check out the latest episode, the latest post. And they kind of wander around and then they stood and staring. What is he doing? And I decided to walk up onto the little terrorist area where I was sitting out of the wind. It's quieter for the mic as I'm recording. But she's come over. Oh, what's he doing over here? She's a funny one. She pretends she doesn't care and she's not interested and she's staying away from me. Oh, she's eating leaves. She's come to clear up some of the fallen leaves. She enjoys those in particular, so she's just hoovering up some leaves. This is a follow-on from her breakfast, which she's already had.

[8:20] There you go so there are things that are that's curiosity at work that, is it welcome they i don't know i i'm probably assuming it is i'm not rushing after her or pushing her away or or trying to get close to her um so that kind of behavior is welcome when you start doing things that are over the line they they do notice the difference.

[8:44] And you'll see the change in body language with the ears and the head and the they'll try and move away etc so there are times when you do need to check him over it's good to do the body condition as i said uh and check the feet and check around the eyes it's a good time time of year to be doing that kind of thing yeah they if you're sort of relatively still and patient don't as i said last time don't creep around because they feel like they're being hunted, but uh don't rush around so slow and steady um and you can just kind of be able to, engage with them oh hello pridwen just come around the corner oh hello and ellie as well oh they're all coming now there's something going on i don't know that it was because of megan or because it's just a sheltered spot have the have i picked the good sheltered spot and this is where you normally come perhaps this is what you normally do after breakfast and i just didn't realize, well hello oh you're coming for a leaf oh look at that there's a there's a thing happening now where where some of the others are now starting to go find find leaves so betsan has just come around the corner and she's she's looking for leaves as well but uh megan has got the best collection so far um they've all gone she's had them so they're ones from uh that have blown down from the willows and was a definite working through them. How funny.