Breeding a maiden

Our girl Dahlia out of Dolores and Coyo Destini has been hanging around the boys gate a lot. At 15 months, full size, we figure she is probably ready to breed. So we bring Skye in. She is not interested in him. He is not interested in her. We separate them from the rest of the herd and still nothing. She is looking to get out; he is eating hay.

We decided to see if it was just the chemistry between the two of them and brought in Thunder. He got excited immediately, started orgling and trying to mount. This upset Skye tremendously and he kept trying to get Thunder away from "his girl."

Dahlia was not running away and looked more and more like she was ready to go down. So we took Thunder out and sure enough, Skye was finally worked up enough that he began orgling, mounted her, she went down and they bred nicely for 15 minutes. Skye is a gentle guy and without encouragement he is very respectful of the female but manly enough when threatened by another male to respect his territory.

While all this was going on, little Prince William who is just a week older than three months, decides that he wants some action too. While we had Skye on a lead among all the girls, we noticed that Evie was acting very attentive. She put her head between Skye's front legs. Clearly she was interested. Where she is only 13 months, we figured she wasn't ready but it looks like we were wrong. Next thing we knew, William was mounting Evie, she went down and he made lots of efforts to breed-including orgling. He wasn't quite in position and it was clear that nothing was really happening but it certainly looks like Miss Evie is more than ready and William will likely be an early maturing male. We have often left the males with the females for a few more months but we will have to be sure to wean him quite early!

Want to read past posts or see the animals? Click here: Maine's Bellemont Farm Alpacas.