What do alpacas eat?
Alpacas are ruminants. They have a 3- chambered stomach and chew a cud. They are grazers and they love to graze. Grass is their main staple. The best thing to do, we have found, is just to ask around at other ranches and your vet, to see what is most desired in your area. Trust us on this, you will hear enough different ideas to make your head spin! One of the biggest concerns is too much protein, so alfalfa is out of the question. A desired protein level is between 12-15% depending on if a dam is pregnant or not (they get the higher amount… they are eating for two). It is difficult to find a perfect blend of grasses to meet all the nutritional needs of the alpaca. Supplementing their grazing with baled hay is usually needed (and who likes to eat the same things all the time anyway?). A wise breeder will test their hay and supplement missing nutrients with a pelleted grain. Again, checking with your vet (who should be a good camelid vet!) is the best source of information!
Alpacas are principally grazers but sometimes they enjoy casual browsing. They are fastidious food selectors that are highly adapted to eat small amounts of a variety of plants. Although they can survive very harsh conditions, alpacas do best on good quality pasture and benefit from having access to plant material with long fibres: eg. hay. There are a number of commercial alpaca mixes available but these are best thought of as supplying vitamins and minerals rather than the bulk feed which is obtained through grazing. One important rule to remember is to introduce any changes to the diet gradually, over a period of a couple of weeks. This way, the microbes in the gut have time to adjust to any feed changes. Some gardens contain a number of plants that are toxic to most livestock (oleander, rhododendron, laburnum etc). Care should be taken when fencing off gardens that such plants do not overhang into alpaca areas. Likewise, there is a long history of calamities with other livestock th
