A few days ago we clicked on this zoom link to learn more technically about feeding alpacas. And after nearly an hour of nutrients and gut physiology and lots of technical words, someone said “water”. Honestly, the most important thing I learnt was about water.
We have always been very careful about what we feed our animals, but never included in our feeding schedule the water. It is known how water is so important to life. You can do for some time with restrictions in the food. You can’t do so well without the fluid of life.
In our farm we extract the water from a well just at the door of the old cottage. It has been used for centuries. When we started thinking about the quality and origin of the water from the well, we though of the way the water naturally runs into the hole. Obviously, any land above. Not much high or far, but there is a house just above our boundary. We know our neighbour has a system for disposing of his waste water, but could not find records in the council’s system. We know there is a something, but not what. You can see it in the satellite maps, some circle not far from their house, uphill from the well. Sure thing would be to ask.
Having next door the most unreasonable, narcissistic and abusive of neighbours we could have though of, we are going to do it English style, nos salimos por la tangente. We are going to test the well water and find out if there is any filtration that might be contaminating the well. If there is, we will start whatever procedures to resolve it. If it’s clean, we are in luck. Our animals can continue to use the water from the well, as people and other animals did all these past hundreds of years. Then we might even consider a filter system and reducing our water usage from the mains. What lot of thinking came out of a course about feeds!
Kestle Alpacas 