Finally!

Such a long winter. My partner, Brad, passed away in November. Winter was cold and miserable, my son moved up from S. CA. and now lives in Brad's house. Great for me, help with the alpacas, AND I get my granddaughter, Asia, all the time.
Spring is very slow to come. The end of May and it was snowing this morning. Asia spent the day with me playing with playdough, reading books(me), and generally having a great time when her mother, Natalie, calls me and says," Did you know that there is a baby alpaca by my front door?"
Now I do, so we bundle up and go outside to see the beautiful baby girl. She is already up and trying to nurse, but very cold and shaking. We put a little cria coat on her and away she goes!

Felt...sort of

I know many arts and crafty people, I'm not one of them. I was just at a Camelidynamics Advanced Training. It was wonderful and in the evenings people did others things. One night they did felting, which is something I've always wanted to do, but I needed to get back to Bobby at our hotel.
So upon arriving home I decided I would try to wash and felt some neck fiber. This is my result so far. I'm on my third try as I type.
Updates to follow. OMG the washing machine is agitating, got to go.

Aww

Finally, the last cria of the year. Catamarca, my one import, just had her cria. It's a little boy, but that's o.k. He's healthy and cute of course and such different coloring. I can't tell for sure, but it looks like he's white with beige spots?
Well, I guess you'll just have to look for yourself. :)

Summer starts

So busy, the crias are growing at an almost alarming rate. Rose Rain is already 60lbs at only 2 1/2 months. Chocolate is not far being her. Little Rowdy is still lagging, but slower is Almost. We discovered that Almost's mother was refusing to let him nurse. The poor little guy was keeping himself alive by eating anything he could get down, but nothing compare's to milk for babies. Now he is on a feeding program of milk supplement twice a day. He has started to play a little now that he isn't only surviving. This is why we weight our crias frequently as they grow, sometimes it's the only way to know if there is something wrong.
All the Barn Swallows have hatched and are now flying around madly. So much fun to watch them. In the evening as it cools down, the swallows dip and swirl, crias buck and play, and we give thanks for the beauty all around.

4th of July

Finally, shearing is done, fleece samples for shows are all tucked into their bags, and breeding is done down to spit tests. So today we rest. Not exactly, we spent all the cooler morning hours cleaning pens and water buckets.
As for spit tests, a female alpaca can tell if she is pregnant within about 5-7 days after breeding. If you expose her to the stud after this time period she should spit at the stud, thus called the spit off.
Although many people use ultrasounds for pregnancy testing we seem to have excellent results from spit offs.
For the most part this weekend we get to sit back and watch all our beautiful animals

Crias in the afternoon

Two more new crias. Mint's new little boy and Vicky Belle's little girl. No names yet. Sometimes it takes a day or so for them to tell me what their names are to be. This little blond is Mint's new boy, in the background Felicity is sporting her new hair cut. Our Rose Rain is pictured at top.
Vicky's girl was born last night. She didn't want to nurse and had globs of her birth sac stuck in her mouth and nose. Very gross. Even after cleaning her out she wouldn't nurse. We milked mom and got 2 ounces of colostrum down her. This morning the same story so we loaded her and mom into the truck and off to the vet we went. She has a very low IGg and they will monitor her for another 24-48 hrs to see if it will come up or if a possible transfusion is necessary. No pictures of her yet. All the other alpacas are enjoying their new shorn selves, especially since it has suddenly turned hot.

More Shearing

It rained so much that we were constantly shuffling animals from place to place and shelter to shelter trying to keep them dry enough to shear.
Once in the barn though everything ran like clockwork. What a great team.