Since spring is a season of new beginnings, I am going to start by sharing a little about alpaca breeding and birthing.
Spring has long been synomomous with new beginnings. Most farmers, especially livestock farmers, view spring with a mixture of excitement and dread. This is the busy time of lambing, calving and the like. A time for concern about birthing difficulties and roving predators as well as a time of wonder at the sight of new little creatures in the fields.
The alpaca industry often shares in the excitement of new births during springtime. However, it is a deliberate choice of each breeder to time their births for spring.
While alpacas possess the same basic anatomy as that of cattle, sheep, goats, pigs and horses, they differ in a very unusual way: breeding is required before ovulation occurs (induced ovulation). Alpacas do not have a estrus cycle or "season". A female alpaca is always essentially either pregnant or receptive to the male.
This is a very valuable asset for alpaca breeders as farmers rarely get to choose when their workload will increase. Those who like to travel can plan their births for a time when they will be home while diversified farmers can time their births around the workload associated with other farming activities.
The female alpaca is ready to be bred about 20 days after giving birth for which the industry is very thankful. The gestation period is about 11 months or 330 - 365 days. If you should try to rebreed an already pregnant female stand aside or you might get a shower of alpaca spit. The girls are quite adamant when they don't wish to breed.
You can't tell that a female alpaca is pregnant until quite a way into gestation as the vast majority of fetal growth occurs after the 210th day of gestation.
The birth process takes place with the pregnant female standing and the front feet and nose of the offspring appear first. Most births are pretty routine with the cria up and nursing within the hour.
Because of the different placental attachment, maternal antibodies are not passed to the fetus before birth. It's critical that the cria ingest colostrum within the first few hours of life to ensure transfer of the vital antibodies.
Of course this means that a breeder really wants to be on hand for the births just to ensure that everything happens as nature planned.
This may sound rather onerous until one remembers that almost without exception, crias are born in the morning or early afternoon. Seldom does a new baby appear after dinner time.
When considering that alpacas come from the high Andes mountains which run through Chile, Bolivia and Peru, it would be imperative for survival that the young are born early in the day in order to give them time to dry off and begin moving with the herd before the sun goes down and the cold sets in.
Although there are only about 3,000 alpacas in all of Canada once you become an owner it seems that everyone you know has a few. The alpaca community in British Columbia is growing by leaps and bounds and it is not expected to slow down for a long time.