Winter Issue 2006-2007

How I Invented the Modern Day Alpaca Litter Box
Author: Dave Sanderson
Parker River Alpaca Farm

When folks visit our farm and I show them our "alpaca litter boxes" I can expect a doubtful stare and then the question: Can you really teach an alpaca to use a litter box? I usually answer with a little white lie, "absolutely".

The truth of the matter is, you cant really teach an alpaca something they already know how to do. However, if you listen to your alpacas, they just might teach you a trick or two. Like how to build them a litter box that youll enjoy as much as they will. 

It is the alpacas nature to create communal dung piles. The piles are a very important part of the herd itself and one or many forms of communication among themselves. The composition of the communal dung pile reflects the gender, sexual status, age, and health of each of the herd members. 

When we brought our first alpacas home to their brand spankin new shelter 7 years ago, we had their outdoor dung pile all ready for them, just where we wanted it. Before we unloaded them off the trailer, we sneaked back over and seeded it with a sample of their own dung we asked to be brought along with them. Sure enough, the alpacas walked right over to their new dung pile and relieved themselves from the long ride. I can still picture us, giggling like little children at the site of those outsmarted alpacas, it was just like we planned. 

Everything was just ducky for nearly a week until their first rainy day on the new farm. Those lazy alpacas wouldnt walk 10 stinking feet out into the rain to go poop. Instead, they started going here and going there, right in our brand new barn! Id scoop it all up and move it back where it was supposed to be, scolding the offenders. Then Id sprinkle PDZ all over the soiled spot in the new barn. What great fun that was, something for the herd to roll in. This went of for quite some time. When it rained, theyd all be under shelter, just watching me out in the rain, watching me raking up their soggy poop, in the barn watching and pooping and humming "get a load of this guy&.doesnt even have the sense to get&.". 

Once I finally abandoned the idea of forbidding them to do their business in the barn, they started to get a little more organized. Instead of having little piles all over the place, they were constructing one huge sprawling pile. Id try and shrink it down to size and make it move to the corner where I wanted it, but theyd play no part in that. The pile would always migrate back to dead center in the barn to my udder dismay. I stubbornly clung to the dung pile in the corner plan until one day I just crumbled, gave up broken, defeated, and humiliated by my own alpacas. Fortunately, the alpacas hadnt given up so easily on me yet.

Over the years, I came to appreciate those centrally located piles. I could drive the tractor into the shelter and scoop everything right into the bucket. When it was pouring outside, my daily harvest of "brown gold" was more pleasant. I was inside with the alpacas and out of the driving rain. The alpacas didnt look at me so funny anymore or hum their insulting jokes behind my back nearly as much. 

We eventually eliminated the original man-made dung piles outside the barn. We use four wheel sidewalled garden carts as hay feeders. They hold a bale of hay perfectly and we can easily move them wherever we want. We cleaned up the original pile and rolled the hay wagons in its place. Any time a new pile starts in an unwanted place, we rake it up and move in the hay wagon for a while. 

So, everything was working pretty well after all, although not exactly to plan. A few years later we expanded the original shelter into a barn with 4 separate but identical living quarters. This time, each new living quarter by design had its own center dung pile. This was an instant success and were getting about an 85% hit rate consistently with each alpaca group, but there was still that 15% miss rate. 

One day I simply boxed in one of the piles with four 1" X 6" planks on end to try and separate the straw bedding from the poop pile. Immediately, that pile began getting a 99% hit rate inside this new "litter box". Well, Momma didnt raise no fool! Each pile was soon framed in with the 6-inch high boards. That little border was just enough to define the boundary. I was pretty proud of myself at that point, being so cleaver, inventing litter boxes and systematically training the growing herd to use them. 

The final major breakthrough in the evolution of the alpaca litter box took me just a bit longer to figure out, maybe a year or so& Every time the brown gold was harvested, a little more of the stone dust floor under the litter box went along for the ride to the compost pile. The litter boxes were turning into pits in the barn that were gradually getting deeper and deeper. One day I ran out of stone dust to refill the last hole. I had an old rubber garage floor-mat that we used to use when we were shearing alpacas down on the ground. So I threw that into the box and presto, the Modern Day Alpaca Litter Box was invented! The alpacas all came running over and inspected their new litter box with intense interest. They seemed almost astonished and started in with their humming "man, what took this guy so long&. how did we ever domesticate these humans&it must have taken thousands of years", they were merciless.

In the days before I trained our entire herd to use the alpaca litter boxes I invented, we used to clean up their dung piles twice a day. We only had a few yet it only took about 15 minutes in the morning and again in the evening. Today with the litter boxes and a herd that fluctuates between 30 and 40, we only have to remove it all every couple days, taking about the same amount of time overall. 

We place a bunch of shredded newspaper in the boxes then rake any loose hay or bedding that gets scattered about on top to keep the paper from blowing away. Then, periodically well rake up more barn debris and resurface the pile with fresh clean new layers. The layered compost in the boxes is insulated against winter freezing until about 10 below zero. Even then, the frozen urine soaked newsprint puddle at the bottom just slips up off the rubber mat. We drive the tractor right into the barn, fork it into the bucket and off to the compost pile. 

The mix of dung, hay/straw & urine soaked newsprint, makes for the perfect nitrogen/carbon compost media. For all you composting connoisseurs who take multiple vitamins, you know where most of it goes. The shredded newspaper at the bottom of the rubber mat soaks up all the alpaca urine recovering all the excess vitamins & minerals that pass through the alpacas and eventually it goes back to our pastures.

With the success of the Alpaca Litter Box project behind us, were now dreaming up clever new tricks to teach our alpacas.

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