Island Alpaca Farm
A herd of alpacas in a meadow on Martha's Vineyard, a working island farm on a live webcam: barn at four.
About this view
A live webcam on the meadow at Island Alpaca, a working farm in Oak Bluffs on Martha's Vineyard, the island off Cape Cod. Alpacas are the small, woolly camelids of the Andes, bred for fleece rather than burden, and a herd of them behaves like a slow, curious crowd, grazing in a loose group, staring at anything new, humming to each other.
The frame is the herd at pasture: grazing, dust-bathing, the occasional spat that ends as fast as it starts, and crias, the youngsters, sticking close to their mothers in spring and summer. Shearing day, late spring, turns the whole herd into a different set of animals overnight.
The herd is in the meadow through the day and heads back to the barn around 4 pm (UTC−5, −4 in summer), after which the field stands empty until morning. Summer is when the island fills and the farm is busiest; winter is quiet and often snowy.
