Halt! A cautionary halter tale.

Discussion in 'Haltering' started by Ariel, Mar 23, 2017.

  1. Ariel

    Ariel Associate Member

    Joined:
    May 28, 2016
    Messages:
    4
    Location:
    Queensland, Australia
    Rosie, my youngest alpaca, has had an especially bad halter experience at the hands of her previous stud owner/breeder.
    When she was a cria, Rosie was singled out to be a PR animal, as she is a very pretty, rose-grey Suri. Since said breeder always had trouble haltering her animals, she usually just left halters on the alpacas she frequently used.
    When we first saw Rosie, she was twelve months old, and looked a bit like an oversized cria, with a lean, gangly body and small, oddly-shaped head. In our inexperience, we put this down to the fact that Rosie was just young and still growing and developing. When we arrived at the farm two months later to take delivery of our alpacas, the breeder wanted to keep the fixed-noseband-style halter that Rosie was still wearing. The breeder and her assistant got Rosie into a chute and struggled for several minutes to undo the buckle. When we looked closer, we could see that Rosie’s halter had become so tight, it was actually embedded in her head. As the breeder refused to ruin the halter by cutting it off, we watched in horror as she heaved the crown strap even tighter into Rosie’s head, just to free the buckle-pin from the eyelet. When the halter finally came off, we saw that the it had left groove marks across Rosie’s nose and jaw line; stunted her natural head development and prevented proper jaw movement - her mouth had basically been tied shut!

    When Rosie arrived at our property, she was sickly-looking and unbelievably thin; had trouble chewing in a normal figure-of-eight pattern, and walked around with a lowered neck and squinting eyes. As a PR animal, Rosie had not been run with the rest of the breeder’s alpacas, and seemed to lack ‘alpaca social skills’, and struggled to be accepted into the new herd.
    Nine halter-free months later and boosted with a nutritious diet, Rosie is now a healthy young alpaca with boundless energy and a properly developed head and body. She still seeks human attention, probably a lag-over from her PR days, but she has finally found her own place in the herd and has developed an amazing personality. A recent picture of Rosie is pasted below.

    We are currently on ‘cria watch’, which so far been a roller-coaster of emotions. Apparently, three of our maidens were mated before we bought them and are now showing some behavioural cues that are supposed to be typical of pregnant females. This news is a huge surprise: given their poor body condition when we got them, I really did not think they would be pregnant. However, we now have our binoculars and rope ready to go!

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    Last edited: May 12, 2017
  2. marty mcgee bennett

    marty mcgee bennett Administrator

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