Alpacas-Identification and Record keeping

Joy Whitehead explores what you must do, what you might do and what you should do!

- Joy Whitehead

In a small alpaca herd ear tags may not be considered necessary, as these animals have very individual personalities, and/or can be differentiated by colour, markings for example. However in a larger herd it becomes more important, for example for administering medications, to ensure that the correct animal receives the right treatment. Record keeping is an essential tool in any herd.

EAR TAGS AND MICROCHIPS

There is no legal requirement in the UK for alpacas to have ear tags. However, when an alpaca cria is born at Bozedown Alpacas we take a very small temporary ear tag, write (with a permanent parker) the dam's ear tag number on it, and insert into either the left ear for a female, or the right ear for a male cria. Thus if a cria gets separated from its mother for any reason we can still easily identify it. We also weigh the cria using a spring balance and sling and record the tag number and birth weight which is later transferred onto a new animal record which we create on our herd management software programme, Herdmaster.

Each cria is weighed every day for its first week of life, then weekly for the first month, and then monthly until weaning. This is to reassure us that the cria is getting enough milk and is thriving. After weaning it will be weighed weekly until we are sure it is still growing on well. All these records are transferred onto Herdmaster, so that we have reference points if an animal loses weight or becomes unwell. While weighing the youngsters we will also be checking body condition scores of each one and, as the alpaca grows on, regular body condition scoring takes over from weighing in the main. All this information is also transferred to the computer programme.