 IT’S NOT EASY BEING GREEN OR IS IT?
By: Dr. John G. Ferrante
A green mentality is sweeping the country and we are becoming more aware of the increasing scope and magnitude of damage to the environment from our activities.
So what does it mean to be green and to live in an environmentally friendly way?
To conserve natural resources and energy through activities that use less non-renewable materials like oil and natural gas. To make decisions and choose alternatives that minimize the need for chemicals and fertilizers that are harmful to the environment. To use resources wisely remembering the needs of generations that will follow.
Being green is all of these and more and for humans it takes action, it takes a conscious decision to promote green technologies and to model one’s life to "do no harm".
We are designing porous sidewalks to reduce runoff causing erosion and lose of soil, sod roofs, installing rain gardens and infiltration basins for collecting rainwater in our urban centers. We use less fertilizer and chemicals on our lawns, perhaps tolerating a few more dandelion’s, generating electricity from solar cells and wind turbines to conserve fossil fuels, those non-renewable resources I spoke about earlier, and ultimately minimizing damage to the environment.
As our environmental sensitivity increases and an awareness of a finite planet sinks in, who would have thought that when the first alpacas reached the shores of the US we were introducing a truly "green" animal into our country.
Alpacas are originally from South America and primarily from Peru, Bolivia, and Chile. In their countries of origin they are found primarily on the high plains regions, the altiplano, of the Andes Mountains. Survival in the cool and dry climate that only supports sparse forage requires high-efficiency living.
If I had to design an animal that is non-aggressive, sure-footed, resistant to harsh temperatures, able to thrive on low protein forage and produce a fiber that is hypo-allergenic, and kind to the environment - it would be an alpaca. So how do alpacas think and act green? They don’t, for alpacas it is easy being green, it just comes naturally.
What makes an alpaca make it green (no not bad food), friendly to the environment and worthy of our attention? Let’s look at a few characteristics of the animal that affect its environment. The alpaca environment is comprised of all the natural elements that can be affected by the alpaca’s physical, physiological, and behavioral design. These alpaca attributes interact with the environment and change it either positively, negatively or not at all. Let’s look more closely at how the alpaca interacts with its environment and the way the environment responds.
Green Physical Traits: Alpaca are designed according to the environment in which they originated. Just as the bird species of the Galapagos Islands evolved over time to meet the challenges of their environment, so alpacas evolved to meet the requirements of the Andes Mountains in South America. This design when transferred to other environs such as North America has pronounced implications and is expressed in measurable ways.
 Alpaca feet: Unlike horses, cattle, sheep and goats, alpacas have two toes with toe nails and a thick fleshy pad. The pads are more sensitive and make better contact with the ground resulting in their sure-footedness-they don’t tear up the soil. The pads are softer than hoofed animals thus minimizing soil and pasture damage, especially pastures with steep slopes The soft pads cause less soil compaction, and this in turn results in reduced runoff and soil erosion.
Compaction of soils is one of the main causes of overland flow during rain and snow-melt events that causes soil erosion resulting in pollution to streams and lakes.
Let’s see, if an alpaca weighs 105 lbs, and the surface area of the feet in contact with soils, the animal would impact the soil with a pressure of 3.14 lbs per square inch for all surfaces touching the ground.
The implications of a fleshy pad that reduces soil cutting damage and compaction are obvious. A similar calculation for an 800 lb. cow would yield something like, 10.2 lbs per square inch and the compaction would be much more severe since the hooves are hard. It would take a much longer time for a herd of alpacas to wear a path in a pasture when compared with the same number of hoofed animals, e.g, cows.
Easy Keepers: Alpacas are hardy animals requiring minimal structural protection to survive and remain healthy. In the morning one often finds alpacas cushed in the pasture after a cold and even snowy night. They are content and seem to enjoy the freedom of open pastures. Alpacas wear fiber that is water proof, very warm and strong. More about their fiber later.
Green Physiological Traits
Highly Efficient Digestive System: What is it about alpaca digestive systems that allow them to reduce their food to small waste packets or "beans" and minimize their requirement for large quantities of rich food?
To start with physiologically alpacas have high-efficiency digestive systems and simple food requirements including low protein forage. Alpacas are adapted to and designed for living on poor quality food sources since their native forage in South America is sparse with high cell walls and low protein.
They consume between 20 to 40 per cent less feed per unit metabolic weight than other grazers like sheep and goats. When dry fed 8 to12 alpacas require about 1 ½ bales of hay per day and up to 15 can be grazed on an acre of pasture.
Like ruminants (e.g., cows and goats) alpacas have a complex digestive system but alpacas are not true ruminants that have multiple stomachs, alpacas have one stomach with three chambers for the progressive digestion of food.
Compartment 1 (C-1) is where the fermentation process begins. Alpacas secrete a greater amount of saliva into this compartment when compared with sheep. This enhances the initial stage of the digestive process and water and nutrients are also absorbed in C-1.
Did you ever watch an alpaca chew its cud? Well C-1 is the source of the food that is regurgitated and re-chewed (up to 75 times) and that enhances digestion.
A unique thing about the C-1 chamber is that it is actively massaged by muscles that thoroughly mix the contents. This active mixing substantially increases the efficiency of fermentation and the process of digestion.
From C-1 the partially digested food is passed into the second chamber (C-2) where fermentation continues. The relatively long retention time in C-1 and C-2 allows a greater exposure for microbial attack on food particles. The pH in chambers 1 and 2 is close to neutral (pH of 7) which favors bacteria capable of breaking down cellulose (structural component of their forage). From C-2 the partially digested food material passes into C-3 where it is acidified for final digestion.
It is here that additional water and nutrient uptakes place. The undigested waste is then compressed into small dense packets (alpaca beans) and defecated. The beans are easily managed and make excellent fertilizer.
Many alpaca farms compost their waste, use it on their own farms or make it available for local gardeners thus reducing or eliminating the use of commercial additives. The overall process is highly efficient; food requirements are small and simple with no special additives required; and waste is minimal, easy to handle and usable.
Unique Alpaca Fiber: Alpacas produce dense, hypo-allergenic fiber that sheds water and has some of the greatest insulating properties of all animal fibers. It is easily processed without the use of chemicals and does not have any grease or lanolin like sheep.
Its hypo-allergenic properties make it easy to wear, even for people who are allergic to fiber from other animals like sheep.
Although alpaca mills do dye the fiber for special uses, alpacas come in over 20 natural colors (but not green) and much of the fiber is used untreated thus minimizing the use of mechanical processing, chemical dyes and other processing chemicals. This reduces resource and energy requirements and those environmental impacts related to the production of the chemicals and energy like coal mining and the combustion of fuels emitting green-house gasses including carbon dioxide and hazardous chemicals such as mercury into the environment.
Green Behavioral Traits
Reduced Impacts to Pastures: Alpacas graze 5 to 6 hours a day that is approximately 60 per cent less than typical ruminants. In addition alpacas do not damage forage by pulling it up from the roots like some other grazing animals but clip their food off above the ground. This reduces pressure on pastures, the need for re-vegetation, and the use of chemical fertilizers. Many of these fertilizers contain phosphorus that is a know pollutant for streams and lakes. Less phosphorus leads to less plant growth in lakes and streams and that means better water quality and habitat.
Communal Manure Piles: Do you remember the alpaca beans discussed earlier? Well not only is the amount of waste material reduced in the production of these beans but alpacas do not spread them all over the pasture. They use communal manure piles where multiple animals go to deposit their beans and urinate.
 If you have ever seen an alpaca pasture you might have noticed bald spots where the manure piles are located. The grass in these areas has been killed off by the high ammonia content of the urine - but the damage is localized.
Pastured animals that disperse their wastes cause more damage to forage over the entire field.
An additional benefit to communal manure piles is the minimal dispersal of parasites that are released from the animal. Many parasites including protozoa (e.g., Coccidia sp.) and nematodes (e.g., Nematodirus sp.) are passed between animals as they graze grass near manure from an infected animals. Communal manure piles minimize the size of the total infected area in a pasture amount of contaminated soils and vegetation in environment and risk of transmission to other animals. Risk is minimized as exposure is minimized. It follows then that communal areas reduce exposure and thus risk of infection.
Summary Thoughts
So what does all this mean? No alpacas don’t look green they are just environmentally green in many ways.
It means that alpacas are built, function and behave in ways that are environmental friendly. It means that they cause relatively little physical damage to their environment and they require fewer natural resources (including chemicals and structural materials) and energy.
Remember that one must consider the full cycle of producing structural and chemical materials because they not only require raw natural resources (e.g., deforesting for lumber, mining for metals and minerals) and energy and often require waste handling and disposal, all which impact the environment.
Alpacas are environmental stewards without really trying because by design they are gentile to the environment. Given the benefit of conscientious owners that do not force them to over graze in small fields, they are easy on their source of nourishment and the aquatic environments that receive flows from their pastures.
Yes alpacas leave a footprint in the environment but it is small, relatively benign, easily controlled and remediated - their design and presence exemplifies the essence of green.
Dr. John G. Ferrante,
Otter Peaks Alpacas, LLC.
2398 Union Church Road
Thaxton, VA 24174
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