playing catch-up

Alpaca Festival of Oregon video

1. above is the video Eduard Schwan put together for the AFO. Awesome. (I thought I looked pregnant then. You should see me now!)
2. Consuella had a little boy, also found in the field, dry and bouncing, on July 16th (I think). We're calling him "Krusty the Klown," and Lisa's baby "Mona Simpson" (Homer's mom).
   
3. Sophie had surgery on her jaw for the infected tooth (lumpy jaw) that had plagued her since January. The surgery was a success and she no longer needs daily antibiotics! However, we discovered some sort of skin problem on a back foot that has been difficult to treat.
   
4. We've bred four girls for 2011 babies. We haven't bred the maidens because the economy is soft and we are at alpaca capacity on our farm.
5. My (human) baby is due any time now, which explains both the lag in posting on this blog and the future posting on this blog. I hope around the first of the year to get back on a regular posting schedule.

That's it from here!
m

Far too long

Here's a quick re-cap of what has happened in the last couple months:

1. I am pregnant, and due in November! I am blaming my lapse in posting here (and everywhere) on the fact that I was pretty much incapacitated by morning sickness from February to May, and had to spend May and June trying to catch up from February through April. But, yay! Baby on the way!
2. Yesterday, June 15, 2010, we sheared our herd. There's a Paca Talk coming out in the next day or so about it.
   
3. The Alpaca Festival of Oregon begins tomorrow (June 18-20, 2010, for the public)! My alpaca association (WABA) has teamed up with EVAA to put on this show, which is concurrent with the Black Sheep Gathering.
   
4. We have updated www.etfarms.com with new prices and new alpacas. Check it out!
   

So, that's a quick re-cap. I should really be packing for the show right now, but I am burned out.

I hope to see lots of you at the Alpaca Festival of Oregon this weekend!

m

Lil' Margie's gain rate

Margie is gaining about 4 ounces a day. That's half of what I'd like to see her gain. But she's bright and active, which are good signs.

Because Margie seems so sensitive to stimuli, I would hate to put her and her mama in a trailer and leave them on a strange farm for breeding. Thank fully, the person who owns the stud we want to breed Lisa to has offered to bring him to our farm so we can hand-breed them. We're close enough neighbors that this isn't too much of a problem, but there's enough distance between us that he'd rather not be driving back and forth multiple times if the first breeding doesn't take.

In other updates, Dawn will be pregnant a whole year come tomorrow. You'd think a 13 year-old dam wouldn't hold a cria this long. I have heard that one llama vet has changed his due dates this year by assuming a year plus two weeks. That would be close for all our alpacas except Cabernet, who had her baby at around 335 days this year (she's always a week or more early).

In still other news, I've picked through four or five bags of light-colored fiber. Man, I have a lot of fiber. A start is a start, though. Here's a reminder of what my fleece table looks like, though I've moved the whole operation to the garage.

That's all for now!
m

I can't believe it, but...

Lisa is STILL pregnant.

My informal poll of my alpaca friends shows that many alpacas are holding on to their spring babies for an extra 3-4 weeks! Since we pasture-bred El Barto and Lisa, I cannot pinpoint her conception date, but it was no later than June 1, 2008. That puts her at 379 days.

Un-be-lievable.

Alpacas are normally pregnant for 11 1/2 months, or around 340-350 days.

She is so late, that she may have her baby around the same time as Dawn, who is due June 19. I don't really expect any surprises from Dawn, who is 14 and drops her cria within a day or two of her due date.

You just never know in this business.

The other big question mark is what color the cria will be. By my guesstimate, there's a 75% chance we'll have a white baby, since both Barto an Lisa are white. However ,this is the daughter of the dam who just had a black baby from Barto, so we could get a brown or white, too.

This is like Christmas, except you have no idea when Santa will decide to slide down your chimney...only that he will.

la
m