Alpaca Farm Tour in Akaroa - Day 232© NZPocketGuide.com
Alpaca Farm Tour in Akaroa - Day 232

Alpaca Farm Tour in Akaroa – Day 232

© NZPocketGuide.com

Day 232 on the Road

Ridiculously Cute Alpacas in Akaroa

Today we are checking out the Shamarra Alpacas farm tour. And stick around for the “Alpaca Paddock” rap. If you like this video and want to see more 365 Days: 365 Activities in New Zealand, then head on over to our awesome YouTube Channel!

Today we’re going to the cutest and fluffiest farm in New Zealand. We’re going to check out alpacas.

This morning before our tour we take the time to help our hosts here in Akaroa. They are trying to round up about 30 cows for their farm.

So so far we only lost 3 cows out of 30. it’s not too bad. It’s not too bad.

But with a little bit of teamwork and a lot of patience we finally successfully round up all those cows and move them one paddock to the other. It was find of a stand off because those cows really did not want to move.

But we’re leaving this farm for another farm because today our activity takes us to an alpaca farm. It’s called Shamarra and it’s in the Banks Peninsula.

These alpacas are raised on a farm with postcard worthy views. Overlooking the stunning Akaroa harbour and today we are meeting our guides Frank and Anya who have farmed this alpaca farm for over 10 years. With about 130 alpacas here and Anya knows the name of every single one of them. To be honest we know absolutely nothing about alpacas but once we get into the fields with them we just realise how cute these little guys are. They are so interesting to look at super long necks and their sort of scrunched up faces they kind of look like a camel slash llama. But of course the main feature of alpacas is their wool and this is what they’re farmed for. they are like sheep farmed for their wool to make you know all sorts of clothing and garments. We’re gonna be learning more about that on the farm tour itself but for now one of the stars of the show for the tour needs to be transferred from this paddock to an indoor pen for the tour so I put my hand up, I volunteer, I’ll give this cute little alpaca a walk to its pen.

So Laura is taking this alpaca all across the gift shop of Shamarra Alpacas and into its pen but this is not where we’re gonna be stopping right now we are going to back track and go back into the gift shop. The Shamarra gift shop has everything you want about alpaca. There is ton of wool stuff, there is jumpers, there is hats, there is scarves, there is really heaps of stuff and there is also Frank which is waiting for us for the beginning of our tour.

Frank starts by giving us a little bit of the basic rundown on alpacas because I’ll be honest nobody in the group and me neither knows anything about alpacas so those weird animals are from South America and they have very very weird dating habits.

The female is not interested in any long-term relationship. She doesn’t want a boyfriend. She just wants to get pregnant. Once the male has made her pregnant she has no use for a male whatsoever.

She just spits on him?

She just spits at him. That’s how we test for pregnancy. We call it the spit off. We bring the male and female together. If the female spits at the male we know it’s the first stage of pregnancy is complete. We do the second the time. If she spits the second time then we know she’s pregnant.

We then move onto a room where we’re gonna get a firsthand experience with the very find alpaca wool. The alpaca wool is actually hypo allergenic which is quite interesting and there is 22 natural colours that the wool comes into so basically they never really have to dye the alpaca wool to make their whole range of clothing.

Nicely waiting in the pen, we meet back up with Laura’s alpaca where Frank is gonna tell us why alpacas spit on each other and it’s basically just a basic male territorial behaviour.

And speaking of male alpacas, we are making our way to the male paddock where all the males alpaca are gathered together. they know that when a tour is here food is going to be abundant so they are gathering around the whole crowd. It’s pretty awesome.

Anya literally knows the name of every single alpaca in this farm. She knows all their traits and telling us more about them and she’s also giving us some hints on good ways to actually stroke the alpaca that they like and of course it is on their huge long necks.

With amazing views in the background and these super cuddly animals, there’s plenty of photo opportunities to be had but we’re now moving into the next paddock which is the paddock full of female alpacas and it’s feeding time.

And this just goes to show how interactive this tour is. We’re going around the whole paddock feeding all the female alpacas which to be fair some of them are a little bit picky. i mean, I’ve got a full bucket of food here and some of them just won’t have any of it but you can always rely on one greedy lady to take all the food.

And after feeding all the ladies we are then moving onto the last paddock of the tour. Brace yourself, guys, it’s the baby alpaca paddock. It’s absolutely amazing all those babies are 3-4 weeks old they are absolutely amazingly cute. they are super inquisitive they are staying with their mum but they are coming really close up to our cameras as soon as we are stopping to move around. it’s cuteness overload. I’m not emotionally prepared for that.

They are running after us, they are checking out the camera, they are running on top of each other, they are standing in front of the wind, they are looking for some food, they are smelling our hand and our feet and our clothes and our backpack. They are coming to get stoked they are coming to be pet they are running after each other they are playing together they are stroking each other they are running around the whole paddock they are rolling into the mud they are taking a nap they are doing so many cute things It’s amazing and every single time we pop a camera out they have to put their face right in front of it. Oh my God.

Phew, all in all it is cuteness overload here at the alpaca farm in Akaroa we never realised how amazing these creatures are.

[rap music] so after seeing the male paddock we walk toward the female alpaca paddock. Alpaca paddock alpaca paddock alpaca paddock…

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