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

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

catch up

It's been a long time, so here's a summary:

1. El Barto and Consuella have conceived! We don't know how long ago, since Consuella is notorious for hiding her pregnancies. We'll ultrasound her this summer when we have sometime and money.
2. The boys are now sleeping under the stars so that we can get some grass growing in their pasture which is attached to the barn. They are enjoying the fresh grass, and seem to be used to their tent-shelter now. (pictures to come)
3. We had El Barto and Duffy shorn last weekend so that we can enter their fleeces in the Willamette Valley Alpaca Fleece Show on May 19-20. They have been cold and picked on by the other boys all week. Bart opened a new can of whoop-ass to keep the minions in line.
4. The Heart of the Valley Alpaca Show is Mother's day weekend in Albany. Go see the website that Charles and I designed. We'll have two baby alpacas entered.
5. The rest of the herd is going to be shorn on May 19.
6. Charles and I are starting a web design business aimed at small farmers and others who need a custom website and easy data management.
7. I am teaching five different classes this quarter, so I am meeting myself coming and going. Whew!

That's enough for now. I'll have pictures of shearing and the show later.

m

January update #1

Here's the cute picture of the day. This is from the first snow this winter, about two days before Thanksgiving. Milhouse and Charles are caught in a private moment. :)

So much has happened in the last two months that I'm going to have to update you in stages. This post is going to be abotu breedings.

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First, Dawn is pregnant and at home. We had no problem re-breeding her to Patchacuti. She was actually bred the day we dropped her off, and she took the first time. We picked her up this last weekend, and have her in minor quarantine for a couple weeks.

We were not so lucky with Consuella and Barto. She remains not pregnant (according to her progesterone scores). The question is, who's to blame? Is it Barto, the young, inexperienced stud? Or is it Consuella, with her confounding biology which confused the vest at NWA for two months with false negative pregnancy tests? We don't know, so we're going to have some testing done in the near future. We've stopped breeding them for the time being because it is too late in the season for babies to be born (it's snowing AGAIN today, for example).

So, that's the breeding update. Watch for hay and website updates soon!

maren