what's the point of llamas/alpacas?

[purplesequins]

a farm nearby has moved from cattle to llama/alpaca.
I am wondering what they are bred for.
have never seen meat or milk products anywhere and their fleece might be soft but they are only shorn every other year.

😂

I was never interested in Llamas or Alpacas but I have to admit... I follow Mrs. Hinch on Instagram and, oh my, they are the cutest things ever! Roy, Raymond and Rodney! 😀 They're adorable.

I want Mrs. Hinch to adopt me then I can live in her clean, organised, house and I can frolic in the fields with the Alpacas.

I'm pretty certain she's younger than me but yeah.

Sheep farmers use llamas to guard the flocks against dog attacks and rustling.

I see that a small number of animals can be great as pets or to supplement fatms.

but I wonder what's in it for the farmer in such a big operation, i.e. large dairy herd to alpaca/llama.

I don't know - their wool is itchy as f* in my opinion. That picture of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John made me laugh though, so perhaps their purpose is comedy value!

Probably the fact they made fuck all money from the dairy cows so getting up at 4am to milk every day was probably less appealing than a herd of alpacas who mostly fend for themselves

There's a local alpaca farm that hires them out for events. I saw a pic on their fb where an alpaca was the ring bearer at a wedding 😂

I sing this every time I see them. My kids (now teens) barely remember watching the show. But still I sing.

I find it itchy too. But not as itchy as sheep's wool (something to do with microns...). So I don't wear it myself but it is nicer to knit with than sheep's wool!

I went to an afternoon tea with alpacas. Sole use of field lovely afternoon tea and some food you can give to alpacas in the next field (i guess so they don't eat your afternoon tea.....!)

Beautiful relaxing afternoon. And only 3 bookings a day so not to stress them out!

everytime I see them on Yorkshire Vet alpacas seem somewhat fragile. Llamas are used to guard flocks. All lovely animals and my daughter did a day with Alpacas. They are just nice inquisitive animals (still poo and bite tho')

They’re alpacas from the Andes with hooves instead of handies.

😁

Do they seem to enjoy the walks, or do they just want to get off the lead and do their own thing?

They enjoy a walk.. Although some preferred the inside of a bush.... Dh thought because he could manage our large breed ddog he would be fine.

He was sweating when we got back!! Luckily one was trained to carry bags with flasks etc in!!

I’d like to walk one, in that case. DD would love it!

their body language is very different to horses/donkeys.

plus they can kick in all directions...

Maybe they're being bred for medical research? Camelids have a unique class of antibodies which is of great interest for various purposes

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-domain_antibody

And

www.understandinganimalresearch.org.uk/what-is-animal-research/a-z-animals/llama

ooh, that's soundsmuch more feasible for a larger scale farm than walks or fleece or meat.

if it were about meat surely it would be more advertised, like ostrich very tasty btw

I think it's just because they're cute!

Makes me smile!

Enough with the undeniably cute llamas and alpacas. How about a capybara? No point in owning one other than they look like nice animals to spend time with. Like a dog sized guinea pig😀

@newnamethanks

They love a tummy tickle......

have you seen the T.E.E.T.H. on the capybara?

Capybaras probably provide good meat

Always want some but providing the swimming pool has always been an issue.