This prolonged drought is starting to bring home to members - and their alpaca - just what a prolonged drought entails. We think of this in terms of a shortage of water, and this may well be the most obvious shortfall. The more insidious shortage occurs following a failure of the seasonal rains responsible for a pasture that carries you through into the next favourable growing phase - usually Spring.
We are now experiencing a protein drought of two colours; depending on whether you have had a few showers of the wet stuff or not, you are experiencing a green drought or a brown one. In the green drought the pasture looks green, because of a small sparse shoot that is 90% water, so does not provide sufficient protein to fatten lambs or maintain late pregnant animals in adequate condition. The brown variety does not even have the green shoot, because gale-force winds rip the moisture from the soil before the stunted/ overgrazed grass can respond.
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