Do Alpacas eat trees?

[lovinglife]

We have a pasture that we planted a lot of small pines and various types of evergreens. They are still under 5 feet tall, are Alpacas inclined to eat evergreen trees?

Thanks for any advice...

 

[Ownedby3alpacas]

I haven't seen mine show any interest in trees...except leaves if a branch falls off. But I haven't seen them try to eat any needles when they've been around that kind of tree

 

[ksalvagno]

They may eat them. I know they will eat trees with leaves but not sure about pine. If you don't want your trees ruined, I probably wouldn't put them out there. If you can, try them out there and see what they do. There a some types of pine that are poisonous to alpacas though. Not sure which ones.

 

[lovinglife]

Thank you for the replies! They are so cute, we thought it would be fun to own some, maybe when the trees get bigger and don't have branches within easy reach.

Thanks again!

 

[CaliforniabeachHerd]

Mine eat trees
You can always put a little 'cage' around the tree trunk.

 

[MenagerieMama]

Alpacas love pine trees! It is like candy. Keep them away from fir trees, though. We collected Christmas trees from friends to put in their pasture for them to nibble on. The goats loved them, too.

Our biggest alpaca knocked a fence down to get at our fruit trees this past summer...he stripped the lower branches of leaves in no time flat! Dried oak leaves can be poisonous, and some varieties of cherry trees can be toxic in green form AND the dried leaves are supposed to be toxic, though 3 of the trees that were stripped were our cherry trees (Rainier, New York/Gisela, and Montmorency). Also, red maple can be poisonous.