Record keeping

Record keeping is one of the most important things that you do that concerns keeping your alpaca. You should keep very detailed records on all aspects of your alpaca farming to assist in:

Financial Reporting

Health Diagnosis

Herd Genetics

Breeding Programs

Programming Health and Husbandry Tasks

Selling Your Alpaca

Showing Your Alpaca

Training Your Alpaca

Records can be kept either manually or on computer (which usually necessitates manual recording anyway) and can be as complex or as simple as you like.

This section will suggest the minimum information that you should record. It won’t, however, deal with the financial reporting information that is required for preparing financial accounts or taxation returns.

Basic Alpaca Details

The basic information pertaining to each alpaca that should be kept includes:

Name

IAR Tag

Plastic Tag (if tagged, the Identity year and number recorded on the registry)

Date of Birth

Sex

Colour Sire and Dam

Type (huacaya or suri)

Distinguishing Features

Date they came on Farm

Date they left the Farm

Additional Details for Breeding Females

Additional detail that should be recorded for breeding females includes:

Details for Males Used for Mating

Breeding Mating Dates

Females Spit off Dates

Scanning or Pregnancy Testing Dates and Results

Details of Cria Born (date, sex, name, birth weight, colour, quality

assessment)

Any special comments on births, especially where assistance has

been required

Any additional feeding supplements required either for the female or cria

Date Cria Weaned

Any special comments on loss of pregnancy

Additional Detail for cria

Additional detail that should be recorded for cria includes:

Birth Weight

Weaning Date

Weaning Weight

Any special comments on births, especially where assistance has been required

Any additional supplements required

Records of Health Procedures

Recording of all health procedures or health observations is very critical in assisting your veterinarian to make diagnosis and treatment recommendations. You should record:

Type of health procedure

Type of medication given

Amount of medication given

Date of health procedure or observation

Date medication next due where treatment is ongoing, e.g. date due for worming or vaccinating

Notes about any health procedure, observation or condition

Shearing Details and Fleece Testing Results

Shearing details are important keep in order to assess the quality of your alpaca and are required if you are wanting to enter shows:

Date of shearing

Fleece weight

Blanket weight

Average Micron

Coefficient of Variation

Standard Deviation

Fleece Length

Training Details

If you are serious about training your alpaca you should also record brief details about all training sessions to help you learn what works and what doesn’t work in different situations. It will also help if you seek professional assistance with your alpaca training to have an accurate record of what you have already tried.

Show Results

Name of Show

Date of Show

Placing

Class Type (eg Junior Female Dark Fawn)

Number of Entries

Judges Comments

Form - Alpaca Record

Form - Female Record

Form - Vaccination Record

Form - Worming Record

Form - Shearing Record