Alpacas are ruminants, meaning they acquire the nutrients they need to survive by eating eat grass and other foliage.  They then use their specialized stomachs to ferment and digest that food using microbial actions.

I like to consider alpaca opportunistic browsers who will eat any plant life that they can get to.  When in the barn, our alpacas eat 2nd cut timothy grass. When in the pasture, they eat a combination of different pasture grasses that we have planted over the years.  They will also snack on the leaves of low tree branches and anything growing within reach of the fence.

The alpaca diet should consist of plenty of green plants that are low in protein.  Alpacas are very efficient at digesting the food they eat, so you want to keep that protein level low.  The more protein they eat, the thicker the hair follicles will get.  That means the wool they produce will not be as soft as it could be.

For the best quality wool and animals, most breeders also feed their alpaca’s a grain supplement.  It provides them with supplemental nutrition for optimal health.  If you have great hay in your area, your alpaca diet will be just fine without grain.  You can have your hay tested at your local agricultural extension

Here are Child’s Play Alpaca, we give our alpacas a product called Chaffhaye.  It is a premium naturally fermented alfalfa hay product that is easily consumed and digested.  It provides our alpacas with the highest level of nutrition possible in our area, improving the quality of the products we sell.

What Is An Alpaca’s Favorite Food?

An alpaca’s favorite food is probably grass.  That is what they eat the most of when given the opportunity to choose.  Our alpacas love when we give them the opportunity to “mow the lawn” for us.  They only have bottom teeth, so they do not pull the plants out by the roots like a goat would.

Horse treats would be a close seconds, behind grass, for out alpacas.  They love when they see us coming around the corner with the bag of treats.  Most of the alpacas will come right up to the fence waiting for the opportunity to get some treats.

What Alpacas Should Not Eat

Just like any other animal, there are things that alpacas should not eat.  Most of these being plants that are poisonous to alpacas.  I will include a link to a long list of the plants that we know to be poisenous, but keep in mind that some local plants may not be listed because they haven’t been introduced to an a