Alpacas with a calm, outgoing personality can make great public relations alpacas. It is especially important to use an alpaca that is not quick to spit when approached by a person. Although getting spit at might be a memorable moment in a visitor's life, it may not the type of memory that you want to leave when advertising your alpacas. As a general rule, most alpacas don't spit at people approaching them, so it should be easy to find a appropriate gelding to train.

If you want to use an alpaca in a parade, make sure you start working well before the parade. You will want to work with them on halter so they will lead easily. In addition, part of the training will include getting the alpaca used to people and a variety of noises. Remember, both adults and children will be at parades, so it is good to have a few neighbors drop in during your training session so your alpaca will be used to them and the sounds of their voices. You may also encounter cars, horses, bands, fire engines and other large and noisy objects. It will be impossible to prepare to meet all possible situations, but training with a variety of distractions will help the alpaca learn to adjust to different sounds and sights. You will also want to make sure that your alpaca is used to walking on a surface similar to what you will encounter in the parade. Also, make sure their toe nails are trimmed to make walking comfortable.

With a little bit of preparation, you and your alpaca can become a great conversation piece at your next parade.

Almost all farm mascots should be selected from geldings that are naturally friendly toward people. You probably don't want a shy gelding or one that is likely to spit at visitors. Many memorable mascots will come up and interact with visitors to get their necks rubbed or back petted. To groom the gelding into the most personable alpaca you can, it is important to help the gelding get used to many different people with many different types of behavior--men, women, children, people with hats and flowing clothing, people who move quickly and people who want to reach out and pet them. Although not necessary, if the gelding is easy to train, you might see if you can train them to behave in a specific way when you want them to, such as performing some type of trick.

If you have an alpaca that does some type of trick, please drop the Webmaster a line and tell us how you trained your alpaca to do his trick. We would like to use your story on our pages to help other alpaca owners train their alpacas.