We ran across an alpaca training article that made this statement in its opening paragraph.
“It is not absolutely essential for an alpaca to be halter trained and many people have alpacas who are never halter trained. I have several alpacas here who I purchased as adults and haven’t got round to doing any training with.”
The article continued on to say that if you want to show your alpaca you should halter train the alpaca.
It, also, stated that it would be good to have them halter trained for vet visits, fair displays, and going off the farm for mating. We are not identifying the farm who wrote the article because we don’t want to cause grief to any one farm.
It is true that many farms do not halter train and this article is our opinion.
First of all, we feel this statement
“not absolutely essential” is incorrect.
We believe it is ESSENTIAL for every alpaca to be halter trained. To what degree you train them is more of an issue. Alpacas that you show should be highly trained on the halter. Alpacas that are going to the vet, fairs, and off farm should lead without being dragged.
Alpaca training on halters is not that difficult. Each of our alpacas took 15 minutes a day for 10 days to learn to halter and lead. Is spending this short amount of time with an alpaca that difficult to do? If it is, then
maybe you shouldn’t run an alpaca farm. Our alpacas are only haltered a few times a year, but they remember their halter training. Alpacas are smart.
What if you want to sell your alpaca that is not halter trained?
Does it look good to a prospective buyer when your alpaca is balking and pulling on the lead or not allowing you to put the halter on at all? Do you really want to sell a new farmer an alpaca that doesn’t allow haltering? Don’t we want prospective alpaca owners to see our industry in the best light?
What about an emergency evacuation?
What about shearing?
Your shearer will be very unhappy with you and possibly not come back if he has to help you drag an untrained alpaca to where he is set up or wait on you to get the untrained alpaca.
It’s either laziness or not understanding the full scope of alpaca training to not train an alpaca on the halter. Maybe you don’t like working with the animals. Then hire someone to do this important training. Each farm is different, but we can not fathom a good reason not to have every alpaca on your farm halter trained.
The small amount of time spent halter training will give you a more sellable animal even if he’s just a fiber gelding. In todays world of more choices in alpacas, you need to give yourself every advantage over other farms that you can. If your alpacas aren’t halter trained, buyers will find someone elses who are trained.
Alpacas are easy to halter train at six months of age. We introduce them to the halter first. Once comfortable with that (which doesn’t take long) we start to lead them with a buddy who is already halter trained. When this is comfortable to them, then we take them for walks by themselves.
You know what we found out?
An adult alpaca halter trains just as quickly. They’re just bigger and a little harder to handle at first because they have more weight to use against you. There are many methods for alpaca training. There are books and you can search the internet for different methods. Try several and see what works for you. To say that halter training is not essential, in our opinion, is a very poor statement to make. Is 10 days too much time for you to spend with an alpaca to get an easy to handle animal for the rest of its life? Then start some other business
