Alpacas

Therapacas – Alpaca Visits

Book our alpacas to visit YOU in your location.

Nursing homes, Care homes, Retirement Homes and Hospitals

Our alpacas are kind and acquiescent; the perfect surprise guests. They will happily enter buildings and gratefully eat treats out of residents’ hands. This means, we can bring them to you!

Our visits have been designed to be as sensory as possible, so even residents who cannot see or communicate can still participate. We talk one-on-one with each of the residents, offering them the opportunity to touch the alpacas and the various items we bring along. These include a sample of fleece from both an alpaca and a sheep for the residents to feel and compare, as there is nothing quite like alpaca fibre. If the residents feel brave enough, they will be offered the opportunity to give our alpacas some sliced carrots – which we provide.

Whether you have a care home, nursing home, retirement home, independent living facilities, a retreat, care centre, or any other type of venue, we can offer two types of visit:

- A short, one-hour long in-hand visit, with one handler per alpaca. With the alpacas’ welfare in mind, we keep in-hand visits shorter. The number of alpacas we can offer for such a visit depends on the distance to travel. If you know of another home local to you, who would like a visit on the same day, we can offer both of you a discount!
- A full day event, ideal for family fun or open days. Book us for the day and we’ll set up a small enclosure and display, and we’ll bring 2 or 3 alpacas along for the day.

Book our alpacas to visit your home and surprise your residents with an unusual treat. Please get in touch for a quote as price depends on distance and number of alpacas.

Please note that we are happy to travel all over to meet residents, so cannot list prices online. Please email lovealpacas@oriontree.uk with the postcode for the visit and we’ll get back to you with a quote.

ORIONTREE is run as a not-for-profit.

Every penny is put straight back into the farm, starting with the day-to-day care of the animals; whether that be feed, routine treatments, health supplements or vet visits.
We also have the on-going maintenance of dilapidated outbuildings that we are restoring and converting to practical space for the animals. A couple of such projects have been the conversion of an old metal lean-to into a spacious, airy poultry house for our retired, infirm and pet flock; and the conversion of ancient (1946!) turkey pens into an airy barn enclosure serving both as winter housing for the male alpacas and summer shelter for the females, when they are home for giving birth.
Finally, if there is anything left over, we are constantly striving to expand and develop new experiences to bring our world of alpacas, chickens, emus and ethical ways to more people. Some examples include care home visits and we have developed a fantastic educational workshop, with STEM activities and tied into the curriculum, but we want to improve it further, bringing more of the world of alpacas to children across the country.

Every penny you donate goes straight to these projects. There are no staff, no wages, no web-developers. Everything is done in-house and with the help of some fabulous volunteers. Help us create something special for everyone.