Nutrition is absolutely central to caring for your alpacas. If you don’t get their nutrition right, it can lead you down the garden path so that you are constantly finding new problems in your herd. This means that you will struggle to find the time to actually enjoy your animals as you’re always trying to fix the issues! If you’re like most alpaca owners I know, you bought alpacas because they’re engaging, intriguing animals that bring pleasure and calm into your lives. If you can understand how to feed them, you can avoid so many problems:
- uneven body condition scores across groups, making it challenging to feed
- pregnant dams potentially unable to feed their foetuses – their crias may be aborted, born prematurely, or be unthrifty
- lactating dams may be unable to produce milk of sufficient quality and quantity
- crias that don’t grow well or die
- overweight animals that are more liable to experience difficult births
- alpacas in negative energy balance which can lead to metabolic syndrome
- mineral and/or vitamin deficiencies
- potentially dead alpacas….
Getting nutrition right is so important that I have joined forces with Dr Bob Van Saun to bring you something that has never been offered before to my knowledge. It will be the most comprehensive nutrition masterclass ever offered to alpaca owners – and we’re going to make it available ONLINE, so you can watch it conveniently from anywhere and have zero travel expenses! (Psst, you won’t even have to have your camera on – so no makeup or dressing nicely required!) Just block out the time in your diary and dedicate it to learning… for yourself, for your alpacas, and for anyone else who looks after your alpacas when you’re away! Give yourself and your alpacas the gift of their health.
Advanced Camelid Nutrition Masterclass
18th/19th November
Timings are yet to be finalised (expect longer on Saturday!) but roughly 1-6pm GMT on both days.
For those unfamiliar with Dr Van Saun, he is one of a small number of board-certified veterinary nutritionists. In fact he’s double boarded with the American College of Theriogenologists (that’s repro!) and the American College of Veterinary Nutrition. Since breeding and nutrition are somewhat central to everything alpaca and llama owners do, he’s therefore an excellent person to learn from! Fortunately for us in the camelid world, Bob has a special interest in camelids and has done some very interesting work in this area over the years that he will share. He is also a world-class speaker, and is regularly invited to speak all over the globe.
What will you get out of this Masterclass?
- Learn what is unique about camelid adaptations and how this impacts their feeding
- Learn how to read a forage analysis report and use it to make decisions on forage feeding
- Understand whether or not supplements are necessary, what is appropriate and how to evaluate and use them to complement forage feeding
- Discover how much to feed your camelids
- Understand practical ways to develop a balanced nutritional programme
- Appreciate what to do about overweight or underweight animals
- Learn how to develop an organic feeding programme
- Feeding for optimum reproduction
- Vitamin D and nutrition
- Learn about the development of the cria and how physiological changes at various stages impact their health and growth.
How to Register for this Masterclass
Registration opens on the 21st October 2023. Special early bird pricing with bonuses will be available ONLY until 11.59pm on 25th October. [As a heads up, one of the bonuses you might miss out on if you forget to register early is lifetime access to recordings of this course…! So don’t miss out!!]
In order to make sure you receive updates about the course (and the link to register!), make sure you are registered to receive our updates (including our newsletter) using the following link: https://tinyurl.com/Alpacavetsubscribe