The Pacablogger

When I first started owning alpacas, I remember stocking my barn full of orchard grass hay and a lower protein mountain grass, mostly timothy. No alfalfa. We never feed alfalfa, other breeders told me. Your animals will get fat, you’ll ruin their fiber..

Alfalfa is bad stuff.

Now, however, I keep alfalfa stocked year ’round. Used judiciously, it keeps my dams in good condition throughout winter, eases my crias through weaning, and contributes to a rich supply of milk when that newborn hits the ground. For my best producing dams, who turn out one fast growing cria after another, it regularly features as up to 20% of their daily feed, mixed in on a base of grass hay.

Alfalfa – unlike orchard, timothy, and brome grass – is a perennial legume. It tends to be higher in protein (15 – 22% Crude Protein depending on time of harvest) and calcium and just as high in fiber as the grass hays. Because of this, it has gotten a bad rap for making alpacas fat, causing fiber blow out, crooked legs, and skin problems.

Here are the cases where alfalfa has proven invaluable for me:

• Underweight animals
• Growing weanlings who are a body score of a high 5 or under (1-10 scale)
• Pregnant dams in the last trimester – I like to get them up to a body score of a high 5 or low 6 (1-10 scale) pre-delivery
• Nursing dams – especially the first four months of feeding a newborn
• Older animals during winter

Although you can buy alfalfa/grass hay mixes, it seems to work best when I buy straight alfalfa and straight grass hay and mix them myself. I also leave the alfalfa stems for the alpacas – they’ll eat them as the last choice but eat them they will – and get the benefit of all that fiber.

Needless to say, I’m a fan of alfalfa. Not only high in nutrition, but also easy to find, relatively affordable, and universally loved by alpacas. And I can’t help it, I love it when my animals like what I serve for dinner.