Grass and grass hay, all day long
An alpaca is an exceptionally efficient grazing animal, built for sparse mountain pasture, and its daily diet should look plain: pasture when there is enough of it, and plain grass hay whenever grazing falls short. A typical adult of around one hundred and fifty pounds eats roughly two to three pounds of hay a day as its main fill, nibbled across many small bouts rather than in two big meals. Keep hay available in racks or clean ground feeders, and expect intake to rise in winter and for nursing mothers, and to fall on good spring pasture. If you can feel that your alpacas are thriving on forage alone, you are feeding them correctly.
Why rich feed works against an alpaca
The mistake new keepers make is generosity. Alpacas extract more from poor forage than sheep or goats do, so lush pasture, rich legume hay and routine grain push weight on quietly and can upset a digestion tuned for fibre. Reserve the richer hays for late-pregnancy and nursing females, youngsters and animals genuinely losing condition, and even then introduce change slowly over a week or more. Grain or concentrate should be a small handful used as a handling reward or a vehicle for an individual animal's extra feed — never a daily scoop poured for the whole herd because the bag is open.
Minerals and water matched to camelids
Provide a loose mineral formulated for alpacas or llamas, sheltered from rain, and let the herd visit it freely; their needs differ from sheep, and sheep minerals may not match them well. Watch the tub's level rather than individual intake, since shy animals often visit when the paddock is quiet. Water must be clean and constant, in troughs scrubbed before algae builds up. Alpacas sip modestly compared with many livestock, but a nursing female or a hot spell raises demand quickly, and a frozen or fouled trough cuts both drinking and hay intake on the same day.
Reading condition under a heavy fleece
You cannot judge an alpaca by looking at it — a full fleece hides almost everything. Get hands on each animal regularly and score the body over the spine and ribs: you want to feel structure under a light covering, not sharp bones and not a solid roll. Weigh youngsters and any animal you are worried about, and keep the scores where everyone helping can see them. Rotate pasture before it is grazed bare, both to protect the ground and because alpacas forced onto very short grazing pick up more parasites from the soil surface.
Daily feeding signs that need a vet
Alpacas are stoic, so appetite is one of your earliest alarms. An animal that leaves the group at feeding time, chews slowly with feed dropping, drools, loses condition on the same ration as herdmates or goes off hay altogether should be caught, checked and discussed with a veterinarian promptly. Sudden access to a feed store, an escape onto lush grazing or a big ration change followed by discomfort or staggering is an emergency, not a wait-and-see. A short daily herd note — who hung back, whose hay was left — turns vague worry into usable evidence. Putting hay, mineral and trough checks on KinsLe Care Teams gives the herd one shared feeding list, so the person covering a weekend follows the same plain routine the alpacas know.