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General News

14 August, 2023

One Lucky little alpaca

How lucky can you get? Just ask Lucky the alpaca whose relaxed life on a Daisy Hill farm is thanks to an eagle that dropped her there when she was little. On December 5, 2021, staff at Chris and Julie’s Respite Farm were at the Taggart Drive...

By Sarah Mennie

One Lucky little alpaca - feature photo

How lucky can you get? Just ask Lucky the alpaca whose relaxed life on a Daisy Hill farm is thanks to an eagle that dropped her there when she was little.

On December 5, 2021, staff at Chris and Julie’s Respite Farm were at the Taggart Drive property enjoying their Christmas party.

“One of our workers who was at the party looked up and said ‘what’s that in the laneway?’,” Sarah Peters, general manager of Chris and Julie’s Respite Farm, explained.

“We were all in our frocks and in our sparkly heels and we’re tottering along going who’s this beautiful thing?”

Laying helpless in the dirt laneway was Lucky.

“We thought one of our other aplacas was secretly pregnant, we didn’t know where she’d come from,” Sarah said.

“But there was an eagle circling. We thought ‘she’s been taken from somewhere and dropped here’.”

Little Lucky, who was a similar size to a small rabbit, was immediately taken to the vet.

“She got x-rayed. She didn’t have any broken bones but she did have eagle talon marks on her,” Sarah said.

The vet estimated Lucky was two or three days old. The vet said that due to less traffic on the roads because of COVID-19, there was less road kill for eagles to feast on, so the birds were looking elsewhere for food.

Lucky had had a lucky escape and that night the tiny alpaca went home to stay with Sarah and her family.

“My kids took turns sleeping with her in the living room so they could get up and feed her bottles through the night. We did that for about three or four days and then she came back to the farm and they took that on. Then we got a turn again,” she said.

The team at the farm — which provides fully supported farm stays for adults with a disability — and Sarah’s family kept Lucky alive on sheep’s milk, because alpaca milk was hard to come by.

When she was dropped, Lucky couldn’t walk.

“About three days after she was dropped she started to shakily stand up. After that it wasn’t long until she was bouncing around,” Sarah said.

The farm staff checked around to see if any nearby properties were missing a baby alpaca. When they couldn’t find where she’d come from, Lucky cemented her new home at Chris and Julie’s farm.

“She’s farm ambassador. She likes to know what’s going on and meet the guests and greet the guests. The face of the farm,” Sarah said.

“She acts more like a puppy (than an alpaca). She carries sticks around.”

If you go to the fence, Lucky comes roaring up for a pat.

She shares a paddock with another alpaca, Colombo. From their spot on the farm, Lucky and Colombo (who only has one eye) can see the main house and plenty of other animals including miniature ponies, goats and chooks.

It seems Lucky couldn’t have been dropped by that eagle in a better place.

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