Feels Like 113°!!!

Kevin is very popular amongst the ladies in the barn today.  I'll bet you'll never guess what he's doing!

Current temperature is 102° but feels like 113° , as per Weather.com - and that's without the fur coat.

Alpacas can tolerate a fair amount of heat, and we have many fans blowing in the barn, but even the fans couldn't compete with Kevin's cooling therapy.

Give up?  OK.  He's spraying their bellies with cool water.  Did you guess right?

As you can see, these alpacas are very eager to feel the cool water stream on their legs and bellies but we must be careful to make sure no water hits the backs of any alpaca - or they could die. 

Alpacas are amazing animals and this is another insight into the care and wellbeing of their animals that Kevin and Nancy provide on a daily basis.  I learned how it works today, tried it for myself, and I'll share it with you. 

The veins on an alpaca's legs are very close to the skin so running cool water over them is similar to running your wrists under a tap to cool down.  Also, wetting their bellies allows them to cool off, but we have to be careful the water doesn't get too high on their backs.

If water accumulates on their back during high temperatures, whether it's from a hose - which has strong pressure - or a heavy rain, the water gets trapped in their fleece and starts to heat up as their backs bake in the sun.  Black fleeced alpaca are especially prone to heatstroke if they get wet.  Therefore, keeping the hose down and making sure no alpaca cush behind the one being sprayed is mandatory.

As you can see in the pictures, they REALLY like it.