{"id":62840,"date":"2025-08-12T01:56:22","date_gmt":"2025-08-12T01:56:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/62840\/"},"modified":"2025-08-12T01:56:22","modified_gmt":"2025-08-12T01:56:22","slug":"this-aldergrove-alpaca-may-just-be-the-oldest-in-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/62840\/","title":{"rendered":"This Aldergrove alpaca may just be the oldest in the world"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Just shy of her 28th birthday, a resident of Aldergrove, B.C., is vying to be a world record holder.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/d21y75miwcfqoq.cloudfront.net\/70c8fc80\" alt=\"\" style=\"position:absolute;width:1px;height:1px\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer-when-downgrade\"\/><\/p>\n<p>But she\u2019s not an athlete, a chess champion or an explorer.<\/p>\n<p>Lolita is an alpaca, and she might just be the oldest one in the world.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLolita is a really special alpaca,\u201d said Dee Milton, manager of Kensington Prairie Farm.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou don\u2019t see that many alpacas that live past 20.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\t\t<img decoding=\"async\" class=\"c-video__image\" alt=\"Click to play video: 'Agribition Alpaca Fleece Judging'\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/GNM_Agribition_Alpaca_Fleece_Judging.jpg\" loading=\"lazy\"   data-\/><\/p>\n<p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t4:36<br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tAgribition Alpaca Fleece Judging\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p>Lolita came to Kensington Prairie as a rescue at the age of 19.<\/p>\n<p>Story continues below advertisement<\/p>\n<p>Farm staff had seen a number of alpacas on a neighbouring property that weren\u2019t being regularly shorn \u2014 a health hazard given the wooly fiber they grow, which can accumulate up to 10 pounds.<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\t<img decoding=\"async\" width=\"170\" height=\"225\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/1753128969_722_national.jpg\" alt=\"Get the day's top news, political, economic, and current affairs headlines, delivered to your inbox once a day.\"\/><\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\tGet daily National news<\/p>\n<p>Get the day&#8217;s top news, political, economic, and current affairs headlines, delivered to your inbox once a day.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey are really prone to heat stress and a lot of other not very kind body condition issues,\u201d Milton said.<\/p>\n<p>When the farm reached out, inviting them to a shearing event, the owners instead offered to surrender them.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey were pretty skinny, I think they didn\u2019t have adequate nutrition, but a lot of time with our rescues it\u2019s not a malicious thing, sometimes it\u2019s just knowledge,\u201d Milton said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe were able to nurse her back to health, and she\u2019s been thriving ever since on our farm.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Life has been good for Lolita since then. She\u2019s pampered with the best foods and gets special haircuts to accommodate the thinner fibre the old girl produces.<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\t\t<img decoding=\"async\" class=\"c-video__image\" alt=\"Click to play video: 'Wandering alpaca helped home after adventure in Nanaimo neighbourhood'\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/STILL_CHEWY.jpg\" loading=\"lazy\"   data-\/><\/p>\n<p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t0:27<br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tWandering alpaca helped home after adventure in Nanaimo neighbourhood\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p>\n\t\tTrending Now\n\t<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/globalnews.ca\/news\/11328411\/montreal-father-assaulted\/\" class=\"c-posts__inner\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\t\t<img decoding=\"async\" class=\"c-posts__thumbnail\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/1754963782_229_Montreal-attack.jpg\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"336\" height=\"224\" alt=\"\"\/><\/p>\n<p>\n\t\t\t\t\tMontreal father assaulted in front of his children leads to outrage from officials\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/globalnews.ca\/news\/11328911\/lottery-numbers-august-2025\/\" class=\"c-posts__inner\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\t\t<img decoding=\"async\" class=\"c-posts__thumbnail\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/1754963782_736_Lotto-Max.jpg\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"336\" height=\"224\" alt=\"\"\/><\/p>\n<p>\n\t\t\t\t\tLotto 6\/49 and Lotto Max winning numbers for Friday and Saturday\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n<p>But it was only recently that the farm staff got to wondering just how special she is.<\/p>\n<p>Story continues below advertisement<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe knew she was old, she kind of gets special care, she\u2019s put in a special pen where she gets extra nutrition, and we just decided to look it up one day, who is the oldest alpaca in the world, and the oldest alpaca listed in the Guiness Book of World Records is younger than our Lolita,\u201d Milton siad.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo we thought, \u2018Hey! We should take a chance at going for this title.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The current record holder is a lovable but grumpy old man named Hawthornden Wainui, who lives in New Zealand and was born on\u00a0Jan. 2, 1998.<\/p>\n<p>Milton says Lolita has him beat, with a birthday of Sept. 20, 1997, and the microchip to prove it.<\/p>\n<p>While being a certified world record holder will come with bragging rights, Milton says the title carries another kind of meaning as well.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think it\u2019s a demonstration of how well we treat our animals,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf they\u2019re given the adequate love and attention and everything that they need, they really can thrive past their expectancy.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\n\t\t&amp;copy 2025 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Just shy of her 28th birthday, a resident of Aldergrove, B.C., is vying to be a world record&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":62841,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[49,48,44,26277,66,323],"class_list":["post-62840","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-news","tag-offbeat","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62840","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62840"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62840\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62841"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62840"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62840"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62840"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}