Alpaca Vicugna pacos

The alpaca is the smaller domestic South American camelid, genetically the product of male vicunas crossed onto female llamas, and it is bred almost entirely for fibre. More than 80 percent of the world's alpacas graze southern Peru between 3,700 and 5,000 m, where over 120,000 families live directly from them and 85 percent of animals sit in holdings of fewer than fifty. An adult clips 1.5 to 2.8 kg a year; baby fibre averages 22 microns and fleece 26, and about nine in ten animals are the dense-crimped huacaya rather than the lustrous suri. Adults weigh 33.6 to 89.0 kg, mean near 61 kg, so drug dosing by eye is unreliable on farms that own no scales. Females are induced ovulators, ovulating 24 to 36 hours after mating, first bred at fifteen to eighteen months once they reach 40 kg, and carry roughly 335 to 350 days; embryonic loss is heavy and reported miscarriage runs from 7 to 25 percent. Clinically the fleece is the trap: alpacas compensate for disease a long time and a full coat conceals wasting, so condition must be scored by palpation against a baseline temperature of 38.0 to 38.9 C.