In what seemed to be no time at all, Triton grew from a cuddly cria into a full grown male with love on his mind. He was a beauty and had no problem getting attention from the girls. A friend of mine described him as the ‘George Clooney’ of the animal world with his huge dark soulful eyes.
Breeding Alpacas is done the old-fashioned way. Triton got the hang of it pretty darned fast. You bring the female into the breeding pen and if she kushes (hits the ground) she is receptive for breeding. Alpacas only ovulate in the presence of a male, how sensible is that. In order for her to ovulate, the male has to sing to her. It called ‘orgling’. Once the breeding has taken place, the animals are taken back to their pastures. Once a week for three weeks the females are ‘spit tested’, this means you put them back in the breeding pen, this time with the female on a halter and rope. This can get a little dangerous, firstly because if the female is pregnant she will avoid the male at ALL COSTS! This often involves racing around in circles and spitting out copious amounts of a green noxious fluid that she has collected in her mouth. For some reason, Ed seems to be the recipient of this no matter how he positions himself. He now spit tests using goggles!!
As Ed was away when we were breeding Triton and Tameka, I had to undertake the spit testing myself. The first time Triton looked dismayed and confused as I pulled his partner out of the gate before he could mount her. The second time he was pissed. He decided that if he couldn’t have her, I was a shabby second, but oh well.
He raised up on his back legs and slammed me against the fence. Fortunately, I have cultivated an ‘alfa bitch’ attitude from working with all the rescue dogs and verbally let him have it. He looked balefully at me, chagrined.
Believe it or not, Alpacas can be very sensitive and some of them cannot be used for spit-testing because the constant rejection from the females can turn them off completely.
Triton fortunately was not one of them, he loved his job and took it very seriously. We were eager to see babies on the ground so we loaned him to a friend to breed a couple of her females. That was when we learned about fighting teeth.
Adult male Alpacas have razor sharp fighting teeth which have to be either filed down or removed. Why? Because in an extremely efficient method of survival of the fittest, males can castrate other males with these teeth. One day when visiting Triton, as he stretched up to eat yet another fruitless mulberry leaf I noticed a huge hole in one of his testicles. Icy dread crept through my heart, here was my beautiful Champion herdsire with a hole in his testicle! Not good. I instantly called the vet who reassured me that all may not be lost, he still had another one! It took several weeks to heal up and the scar is a constant reminder to keep checking the males for those teeth. Fortunately, it didn’t affect his fertility in any way. Phew!