Out & About Spring 2018

The trek through the fields and woods is a perfect opportunity to see the alpacas doing their day-to-day thing. Scally had been labelled as “an absolute pig because as soon as he sees the food bag he is right in your face”. He lived up to this reputation. At the halfway point the bags of feed were produced and suddenly Scally became my best friend, eating from my hand and trying against the odds to get his head in the bag. Sharon explains: “If they eat out of your hand it is a good indicator that they will be happy to be handled.” Scally was just happy to eat and, once in the woods, he was eating everything in sight, from leaves and twigs, to sweetcorn (from a nearby maize field). Sharon assured me she fed him, despite appearances. The biggest quirk – which is apparently specific to winter – is the

She wasn’t expecting quite as much fluff.” Alpacas are also able to walk upstairs and travel in lifts quite happily and, perhaps more importantly, they don’t generally get caught short inside. If they need to go to the ‘little alpaca room’, they get a bit shuffley and the carer will then take them outside. Sharon is also thinking of expanding her alpaca business: “Weddings are the new things with alpacas. “We are talking with a couple of wedding planners at the moment so we will be offering this service soon. “People have them as ring bearers or they will have a couple walking about and the guests can feed them while they are preparing for the photographs. “We plan to do little monogrammed bags of feed as well. “People want their wedding to be special and are constantly looking for something different.” Sharon has only been running the trekking since November 2017, so it is still in the very early days. “I’m amazed how busy it is, to be honest,” she says. ”We run them every weekend, a couple of days in the week and in the school holidays we run them more often.”

alpacas rolling on the floor like dogs. When they reached the tarmacked road both Scally and Daf got onto the floor and rolled, showing their stomachs, with their legs in the air. Sharon laughs: “I think they do it because it is dry, and the fields are muddy and wet. “The road isn’t bumpy or gravelly and it is a good place to scratch on. They only do it in the winter. In the summer they have a dirt patch that they like to roll in.” Alpacas are becoming more common on the British landscape, but the national herd is still only about 40,000. Compare this to the sheep herd, which in 2012 was 22.9 million, and it seems alpacas are still relatively rare. Sharon recalls one lady on a walk who had never seen an alpaca other than in pictures. Well, now there’s a chance to see them for real in the Berkshire countryside. 

They are quite stubborn. If they don’t want to do something they lie down – an action that is known as cushing

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