The forage plants grown in your pastures are the basis of your nutrition program. The appropriate plantings and care of your pastures is the foundation of good animal husbandry. Pastures are the no fuss muss no fuss system to feed your alpacas. Pastures used for grazing are the most economical way to feed our animals for most of the year here in Oregon.

A pasture is an open field covered with plants suitable for animal fodder. We started with pastures that had been planted for other livestock and were over grown with blackberries and scotch broom. We cut and hauled away all the heavy growth of the black berries and other invasive plants. After reviewing the information provided by Oregon State University at http://smallfarms.oregonstate.edu/weedsplants%2526pests, we cleared the area of nominally toxic plants like tansy ragwort and then over seeded with orchard grass. After about eight weeks of gentle spring rains and sunshine we had beautiful green pastures and we let the alpacas take care of the rest. They really seemed to enjoy eating the tender tips of the berry bushes as they popped up and the continual trimming quickly put an end to the hopes of the once flourishing blackberries!

Permanent Pasture is as the name implies. It is land set aside for long range pasture. It should be seeded with perennial crops or self seeding annuals like orchard grass, bluegrass or white clover. We prefer orchard grass because of the lower protein content but we encourage a variety of plants in our pastures and so do the alpacas. A one crop diet is boring and less nutritious. The care and feeding of your permanent pastures is essential to good farm management. You will be tempted to let your alpacas graze on the first green grass of spring as soon as it springs up but for the long term health of your pastures don't do it!

Pasture Rotation is a good husbandry practice that will serve you well. We divided our pasture in to individual paddocks of between 1/3 and 1/2 acre each. It is our practice to allow the alpacas to graze a paddock until the grass is about an inch or two long and then move them on to a paddock where the grass has been resting and has grown back to a minimum length of 4 to 6 inches long. When a pasture is resting we take composted alpaca manure and spread it over the pasture to recycle the nutrients. It is essential to compost the manure first if you want to eliminate any potential parasites.

Our alpacas seek out the tender tips of the grass and keep each paddock mowed as smooth as a golf course. We had been advised by our county extension agent to allow the grass to grow taller then six inches before we put the alpacas back on a paddock but we found the alpacas would simply graze the shorter younger grass over and over and ignore the taller coarser leaves. However, your pasture grass needs to have a minimal amount of leaf surface to produce growth. If you graze your grass shorter than the 2 to 4 inches required you will pay a long term price. The rate of growth of your pasture plants will be greatly diminished. Instead we advise the use of a sacrifice pasture.

A sacrifice pasture is a paddock that allows the alpacas room to run but has minimal forage in it. In the winter, all our pastures, and those not irrigated in the heat of the summer do not produce enough to keep up with the grazing alpacas. When that happens we put our alpacas on our sacrifice pasture. The is a paddock large enough to let the alpacas run but in short order is grazed down to the point where very little forage is available. We provide free access to hay in our barns and shelters so the alpacas get plenty of nutrition. The point of the sacrifice pasture is to allow the other paddocks to recover and grow back to a healthy state.

Soil Fertility in your pasture is critical the successful raising of good forage for your alpacas. Start by visiting the Oregon State University webpage for small farms  soil testing at http://extension.oregonstate.edu/catalog/html/ec/ec628/. There are also a number of commercial labs that can provide soil tests. We found it necessary to lime our pastures to keep the appropriate ph balance and to occasionally add nutrients to enhance our forage production.

Manure management is just one more piece of good pasture management. We make a practice of picking up our alpaca manure every day out of both the barns and the paddocks. We gather the pellets into a wheel barrow and transport it to one of several compost heaps for use in our orchard or our garden or for spreading on a fallow pasture. By keeping our paddocks clean we help reduce the spread of parasites and we make more area available to grow forage.

Alpaca manure is fairly well balanced fertilizer that is not "hot" or very high in nitrogen. Our friends at ALPACAS of Tualatin Valley did a study with the County Extension Agency in conjunction with state livestock waste management program. They did a diverse sampling of non-composted alpaca manure which provided the following information on alpaca pellets:

            Nitrogen        1.9%                    Phosphorus    1.0   
            Potassium      2.36                     Sodium          0.07
            Calcium          0.5                      Magnesium     0.70
            Solids           31.63                    Total salts      0.67

In summary, your pasture management is the foundation upon which your nutritional program is built. It is a part or your program that deserves some time and resources and will pay great dividends in the long term health of your farm. A well managed pasture will provide plenty of high quality forage for your alpacas as well as a beautiful canvass upon which to display your stock!

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