High Desert Alpacas

Finally!

2010-05-28T17:02:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-02T14:48:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-30T21:30:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-01T18:52:00.000-07:00

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

2009-07-04T12:57:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-24T17:35:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-21T21:23:00.000-07:00

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.

Shearing

2009-06-21T20:50:00.000-07:00

The last week has been nothing but shots and shearing....Oh, and good food I didn't have to cook myself. I tweaked my knee on Sat. the 13th and by Tues. was on no weight bearing, knee immobilizer, and crutches. Fortunately my awesome son is an excellent shearer and came up from CA. with his wife ( she cooked ), daughter ( she kept me entertained ) and sheared all my animals. I gave the torb shots, a light tranquilizer, and yearly vaccinations till our good friends and neighbors came to take over.
We had a super shearing crew this year and all went well even without me to supervise.

Oh, the Babies

2009-06-07T18:00:00.000-07:00

It's been a busy few weeks here. Three more babies to join the first three, there more to go before the end of the month. Whew!
Recap; Chocolate is growing like a weed, Rose Rain keeps getting prettier, and Almost has survived.
On May 29th, Lady Perfecta gave us Felicity, a beautiful maroon colored girl like her momma.
June 1st, Annjelica produced a little giant, named of course, Jolly.
On June 4th was Sierra's first girl. A Vicuna colored darling, Giselle.
All were born happy and healthy, their mommas taking great pride and care of them.
I tried to label all the pictures in order, but as always it escapes me.

Seri and Almost

2009-05-16T20:12:00.000-07:00

Serendipity's Song is a very small maiden. She was due April 15th, she waited, and waited, AND WAITED. Finally after 380 days, (normal gestation being around 345, give or take a few.) She produced an itsy bitsy, teeny weenie male cria. She was very nervous and worried. The cria was very weak. After trying all the normal things you try, meds for mama, hand milk expression, bottling colostrum from mama, (very little available). We put them in truck and off to the vet.
His IGg was nonexistent. That is his natural immune strength some of which comes from mama's colostrum. There I left mama and baby to see if he might survive.
Late that night after many trys mama calmed down and baby started to really nurse. After 2 days we got the o.k. to bring them home.
Huge homecoming activities in the girls pen. He has been slightly lost off and on, but mama always finds him. Time will tell, but we have hope for him. The tech at the vet has named him Almost. Almost what I didn't ask yet, we will wait and see.

Swallows

2009-05-11T07:25:00.000-07:00

I have tried to finish and post this entry with pictures. Have you ever tried to photograph swallows in flight? Not an easy task, so here is the post sans pictures.
Two years ago we had a pair of barn swallows try to nest in the girl barn. The barn, more of a shed really, is a three sided, low hanging, shelter. They tried with no success. Last year on the second nest they had built that year, they had success and raised beautiful babies.
This year they had eggs when the nest fell. Now we have nest boxes and hope they will stay, the birds AND the boxes.
They are intrepid little birds, always forging on it seems regardless of setbacks. They brought another pair of swallows with them this year and they already have a safe nest built
It is fascinating to watch them swoop and dive as they gobble up mosquitoes and flies. Yea!

Rain

2009-05-03T19:04:00.000-07:00

Wind and rain and sun. I love Spring! While we are still waiting for Seri to have her first cria the weather is volatile. This morning was beautiful. Blue sky, light breeze, and a few puffy clouds. I looked out the window and saw Mattie Rose scowling. Now this in it's self is not unusual. Mattie has quite a disgruntled attitude at times, but added to the fact that she was straining over a dung pile and is right on her due date I took a second look. I turned to Bobby and said, "We're having a new baby today".
It wasn't as easy as it looks. Mattie is a 5 year old maiden.(that means she has never had a cria before.) We were worried. I would have taken her out to the vet after 2 hours of labor, but the vet was out on a ranch call. She didn't show sign much. I couldn't see any way to help her. Then the weather took a turn for the worse, cold wind, driving bursts of rain, and blowing tumbleweeds.
Seven hours later our poor exhausted girl plopped out another exhausted girl. Yea!
There was a lot of meeting and greeting to the new addition. Then it started to rain, hard.
We shuttled them up to the girls shed and into a warm, dry open style pen. It was still very cold and the cria coat came out. Two hours later the afterbirth was gone and little Rose Rain was up and nursing for all she was worth.

Puppies 'n Mud

2009-04-21T12:38:00.000-07:00

There are two-three theories on guard animals. Some say LGDs (large guard dogs). Some say guard llamas only. Some like both. We happen to use LGDs.
Not that I have anything against llamas, I like llamas. I just don't happen to have one. What we do have are Great Pyrenees. we love our pyrs. Our two new puppies, Mojo and Badger, came from an alpaca farm in OK. They fit right in with our others, Axel, six yrs old and mostly blind, and Moose, a two yr old rescue that happily found his way to us.
Sunday, Bob took them all for a walk, oh, let's not forget Rikki, the mini Australian Shepard, and on the way home the puppies found this mud puddle. It's Badger that is the water dog.

Spring Cleaning

2009-04-18T21:16:00.000-07:00

Have you figured out the theme for now yet? Of course, Spring.
Today we cleaned pens. Actually, Colin and Hannah, who keep their alpacas here spent the day cleaning the little boys pen and shed. The little boys are the yearlings that have been weaned, but that think they are big boys. They harass our mommas and the new babies so much that we keep them by themselves with a couple of older geldings. Lots of great fertilized dirt came out of that pen.
Bob took the tractor and spent most of the day scraping the girls (mommas) pen. We had to take down some wire cattle panels in order to scrape the accumulation of winter hay and manure out from under. Now we have huge piles of ready compost. Most of will go to neighbors yards and gardens.
I, do to just getting a cast off of my right hand, supervised. Oh, I also picked up trash from where I hope to put the lawn in........finally

Spring has sprung

2009-04-17T17:39:00.000-07:00

Ah yes, the little green things showing up,mostly some kind of nasty desert sticker,the koi waking up in the pond, and the first cria, baby alpaca, of the year.
Knee high snow one day, knee high mud the next. On the right with his big sister Debra Dawn.
Jeanie T waited three extra days until the sun shined to have this sweet little boy.