Accepted wisdom is that when it comes to alpaca feeding each animal needs roughly 18" of trough space. Less than this and the animals will jockey for position at the trough. In that situation, the weaker ones end up eating last, if at all. If this situation is allowed to continue, the stronger ones will eventually become overweight, which in turn can lead to birthing complications and the weaker ones miss out not only on calories but the essential trace elements which we take great care to ensure are included in our special alpaca feed mix. In addition, alpacas have different dietary needs depending on their role, a pregnant dam still making milk for her last cria needs significantly more feed than a gelded male whose only role is to produce fleece.

With this in mind and the much larger size of our alpaca herd, since the initial troughs were installed we clearly needed to increase trough space. Fortunately, we have a large enough barn to feed the alpacass inside. The main advantage of doing this, is that the feed stays dry and there is less wastage. Its absolutely fine to feed outside you just need a feeding trough that keeps the feed dry when it rains...not that it lies around for long!

There are ready-made troughs you can buy for sheep and goats that will work fine. However, I had in my head a simple design. An 8-inch plastic conduit pipe cut in half and fastened to a wooden support to add strength and weight, as I did not want the lightweight conduit blowing away in a the first strong wind.

The design worked out well as you can judge from the pictures. A 20-foot length of conduit cost about $60 and from that I made eight troughs each one five foot in length, enough feeding space for almost 30 alpacas. The whole project took about 2 hours, it is simple, cheap and I recommend it.




By Adrian Stewart