Shearing Day

Shearing day is on April 30th, and it will be quite a production, I think. We are sharing a shearer at another farm, which means that we will have to halter up all the elapses, load them into a trailer, and then take the to be shorn. Our adult females are all only marginal on halters, and I expect at least one of them to hate shearing with a loud passion.

This brings up the question of what alpaca ranches do with the pounds of fleece they are presented with each year. Our six animals ought to produce perhaps thirty pounds of fleece of widely varying quality and color. As much as I am enjoying spinning, I do not plan on processing all of this fleece by hand. In the next posting, I think I'll discuss the many ways to dealing with fleeces, but here I'm going to talk about show fleeces.

You might remember that El Barto didn't get a ribbon at the Heart of the Valley show last month. There are many possible reasons for this, but my personal favorite is that he was too young to do well in a confirmation show. So, I am going to enter his fleece only into a show or two and see how he does. Just for kicks, I think I'm going to enter the fleece of our new alpaca Antonio (Tony for short) as well. He's a pretty bay black, and Barto is white, so we'll have each end of the color spectrum covered. This first show is a sheep-oriented show where an alpaca fleece won grand champion last year. It's not really fair to compare sheep and alpaca, but I'm not going to worry about the ethics of it; they allow it, so they've considered the ramifications themselves. (right?)

This means that I will have to learn how to prepare a fleece for a show. My friend Polly McCrea of Fern Hill Ranch will help me because she's a veteran alpaca rancher and has show fleeces and animals. I'll let you all know what the process is once I learn it. I know it involves skirting, picking, and bagging, but I'm sure it is more complicated than just that.

We are also going to take fiber samples from many of our animals to see how they are doing micron-wise. In this process, the shearer takes a patch of fiber a couple inches square and the rancher sends it in to one of a few companies that measures how fine the fiber is, how uniform, etc. These statistics can be very useful if you are selling an animal because a small micron count and very uniform fleece are selling points.

Another thing that this test can tell you is if you are feeding your alpacas correctly. If they have too much protein in their diets, their fleece can become coarser. It will be interesting over the next couple of years to see how or if our alpacas fleeces are affected. Nearly all alpacas' fleeces become coarser as they age, but sometimes this process can be slowed by altering their diets. However, I don't recommend that newcomers (myself included) monkey with the nutrition of their alpacas just to strive for finer fleece. This involves giving the alpacas a poorer diet. Extreme cases could result in a lack of fiber quality and a starving animal. I'm not confident enough to play with those risks, and I don't think any newcomer should, either.

Anyway, I'm rambling a bit. Feed your animals to maintain a good body score and let the fleeces come naturally. Some of them will be show-quality.

Ta!
m

Pasture Management part 2

I want to apply the knowledge from the pasture management class to our little patch of mud.

First, we are going to spread urea (N) all over our pastures to help the grass grow through spring. We know this will work because the grass around old poop piles is growing furiously. Nitrogen (N) is safe for animals—sometimes it is even put into their food—so we can do this now without worrying about them.

We will kill the grasses that are growing wild, twice, to make sure that we have a blank slate to plant desirable grasses. We will do this sometime in the fall when the rains resume because we don’t have irrigation for the pastures yet. The grass will die back in July because Oregon, contrary to popular belief, has long, dry summers, and grass goes dormant in the heat.

Once we have that blank slate, we are going to drag the pastures with a hunk of log with large screws driven into it. This will help in loosening up the topsoil and make a place for the fertilizer and seed to go. Charles is looking forward to dragging a log chained to the back of his lawn tractor around the property. I’m taking pictures.

At some point before we fertilize, we are going to take soil samples for a soil test. We are deciding which zones to average together because each pasture has a steep slope and a flat area, too. We know that the slopes and flats will be different, so we are considering grouping the soil samples by geography instead of pasture boundary. This means that the pastures may be fertilized in two zones each, with a two types of fertilizer, one for the slope, one for the flat.

Once we have fertilized and seeded, we need to keep the animals off of the grass until it is firmly established. This means that our pastures 2 and 3 may not go into operation until March or February 2006.

Here’s our bit of advice for people looking to establish pastures…DO IT NOW. Begin as soon as you can because it takes a long time to even renovate a pasture. We are actually considering beginning phase 2 of our plans for our ranch by developing another three acres this summer that we aren't’t planning on putting into operation for at least two years. It really does take that long. If you want animals on your land at some point, please consider beginning preparations now. The worst that can happen is that you will have to mow some grass during the summer until you can get animals to munch it down for you.

Pasture Management

For those of you who haven’t been to our ranch, a little description is required. Since we bought the land as a patch of “woods” that had been selectively cut about thirty years ago, we don’t have what most people would call any “pastures” yet. We have some large tracts of open ground that have been scraped of topsoil and forest debris in which some patches of green stuff grow. As it is raining today, we have open patches of mud with little rivulets coursing through them. Alpacas do not care if it is raining until it begins to hail at which point they usually lie down. They do not care if they lie down in mud. This evening, the alpacas came into the barn a soggy mess of mud and sticks, not resembling the fluffy dry critters we let out of the barn this morning.

Something needs to be done.

Part of that something is to install actual pastures, meaning “parcels of ground in which grasses grow,” as opposed to “parcels of ground marked off by a fence.” We went to a pasture maintenance seminar this weekend at Legacy Alpaca ranch in Newberg, OR, to learn how to create and keep good pastures. We are big fans of Ag Ph.D., a television show out of South Dakota that explains farming basics, like what nutrients plants need and how to get them to the roots. We knew we were going to have to add something to our fields, but we didn’t know what.

The primary skill we learned in this workshop was how to take a soil sample, and how to read a soil test. Then, based on the information in the soil test, we learned what to add to different fields to make the pasture grow better.

To summarize: plants need nitrogen (N), phosphorous (P), potassium (K), and sulfur (S) to grow correctly. In our area, we need levels of P = 15-20 and K = 175-200, plus a pH of about 5.9. All of these things can be measured on a soil test. You adjust your fertilizing by the data on the soil test.

Or else you just spread alpaca poo all over your fields. That seems to work just as well. J

Also, it’s going to take at least a year before we will have nice pastures. We have to rake, drag, plant, and fertilize the land, and then let it grow unmolested by animals until it is established. That’s going to take a while.

Along those lines, I planted a bunch of Douglas Fir seedling on our property to pretty up the place. The trees came from our friends Rob and Camilla who were married recently and gave the trees out as party favors. Since we were some of the last to leave, we asked if we could take a bunch of leftover trees. Now we have the “Rob and Camilla Memorial Groves” on our ranch. After I dug a hole for the seeding, I plopped a little scoop of alpaca poo into the bottom, just to give the little trees a head start. I’ll bet the trees will grow like its going out of style this summer!

Have a nice day.

Maren

Updating ET-farms.com

I am in the process of updating www.et-farms.com. I am learning Dreamweaver so that I can make the site look snazzy, and so it is really easy to use. As it is, I am still a little ashamed to send prospective alpaca owners there, but I am striving to make it better.

Perhaps I'll post more today on our new aquisition, Anotnio (a.k.a. "Fat Tony"), a bay-black "replacement" for the little cria which died.

m

Heart of the Valley Show

The Heart of the Valley Show (put on by our regional alpaca association WABA) is over, and we didn't win any ribbons. I'm not too surprised or disappointed. The judge was a huge fan of crimp, and El Barto isn't that crimpy yet. Barto was also the youngest animal in the ring and had not been shorn before, which made his fleece look different from the other animals. Plus, the class was so huge, they had to split it into two classes. It was a tough competition.

But I'm not bitter or making excuses. Really, I'm not.

Barto did beautifully in the ring, so I suppose all those early-morning training sessions paid off. He was relaxed, walked with his head up for the most part, and stood quietly. His two behavioral boo-boos were 1) he relieved himself in the ring and 2) he panicked when the judge grabbed his tail and then checked his fleece. At that point, Barto tried to cush, but I had him by the front end and the ring steward had him by the back, so we were suspending him in mid-air. Charles has a great picture of this which I'll try to get online soon for you.

The main point of the show for us was to schmooze with the public. We gave out a lot of business cards, and collected names of people who might be interested in some information I have or might want to come to visit the ranch. When we have our next open ranch/alpaca party, we'll invite those people, too.

I learned to spin at the show using my grandmother's Turkish drop spindle from a group of spinners who spent the whole show just above our stall. It was so much fun that I bought a roving from our friends at Alpacas at Lone Ranch, which the dog promptly claimed as a toy (it's salvageable). This summer, my grandmother will come up here for a visit and will teach me to spin using her old spinning wheel. I can't wait!

All in all, it was a good show. We were completely exhausted by Sunday night, and we went to bed at around 9:30. Spring quarter began today, so we started classes tired, and a little unprepared. I don't think we will go to any more alpaca shows during the school year, but there are plenty of summer shows. We will go to Heart of the Valley again next year because it should coincide with Spring Break again. Otherwise, it will be summer shows for us!

Having a new baby around is like...

Our cria has a name: Milhouse!

Yes, he is already Barto's best friend, and, typically, he runs to his mom when he's had enough of Barto's rough-housing.

When Milhouse was two hours old, he ran laps around the maternity pasture. We weren't surprised by this because he had been kicking Consuella from the inside mercilessly for about a month before he was born. This is a vigorous baby.

Milhouse, Consuella, and auntie Cabernet were confined to the maternity pasture--a smaller pasture with lots of trees and more secure fencing--for about two weeks for a couple reasons. First, we were concerned that a clumsy baby could get tangled in the New Zealand fencing we have up in the rest of the pastures. Second, Barto was too rough for a while; we wanted to make sure Milhouse could get away from him if necessary. Milhouse is actually more agile and light-footed than Barto is, so we don't have to worry anymore.

When he is out in a field, Milhouse thinks he is grazing. He takes mouthfuls of the little grass that we have, and seems to enjoy munching it. I am so new at this that I have no idea whether he is actually eating or just mimicking mommy at this point. Either way, he is awfully cute doing it. Now that he is in the big pasture with the other alpacas, the circles he runs around his momma are getting bigger and bigger. He is a very independent cria, and will often cush down 75 feet or more away from Consuella. His exploring has taken him much farther than that from her, but he makes a bee-line for her if he is ever frightened by something.

Charles and I are finding cria-watching more entertaining than TV. Alpaca watching has been a good hobby for us, but the baby has made the view out our breakfast nook window all that much cuter. Milhouse's dark eyes really stand out from his little golden head, and his ears always seem to be cocked at an adorable angle. I'd believe it if someone told me that there were cuter babies out there, but I'd need proof first.

The farm is really greening up. The "pastures" are beginning to show evidence of tiny shoots; they are far more evident outside of the alpaca pen. The cherry and apple trees are blooming and their branches have so many blossoms that they look like they've been strung with popcorn. The maples are showing signs of life, too, but so is the poison oak. This means that our stick picking will become more risky, as the new leaves of poison oak have the most oil on them.

This is spring break for WOU, so I'll try to write more this week than normal. We have the Heart of the Valley alpaca show coming up on Saturday and Sunday, so I'll fill you in on our preparations for it.

ta!

New and improved website and More Pictures

Below is the link to the new and improved version of our farm website.

http://www.et-farms.com/index.html

And, of course, we took more pictures of the baby yesterday. Here he is all dry and fluffy.

http://www.et-farms.com/baby_pictures.htm

Click on 3-8 for the most recent pictures.

Enjoy!

maren

Baby!

The newest addition to our alpaca farm is here!

Click here for pictures: http://www.et-farms.com/ETF%20Website/Baby3-7/index.htm

This time, everything was text-book perfect. We noticed that Consuella looked like she was in labor when we went out to the barn to give the alpacas breakfast. First, Consuella made a bee-line for the poop pile instead of munching on hay for an hour or so in the barn as usual. Then she lay down, stood up, and lay down again on one hip and looked uncomfortable. Then she went back to the poop pile.

Charles and I went back into the house at this point because there was nothing more for us to do. We also assumed that if Consuella was actually in labor, she would be in labor for about an hour. Not so! By the time I was out of the shower, Charles said, “Hey, there’s something hanging out of her butt!” By the time I threw on some clothes and grabbed the camera, the little critter was half-way out.

Consuella was in observed labor for only about 35 minutes. The cria stood up after 50 minutes, and immediately started to nurse. He was running laps around the pasture at two hours old, which isn't surprising given how much he kicked while he was still inside Consuella.

The baby is a beautiful golden-colored boy, the spitting image of his father, Tocto. We haven’t decided on a name yet, but we are trying to keep things on a Simpsons theme. Ralphie, Milhouse, and Nelson have been suggested.

It is so nice to have a normal, healthy cria that plays and runs around. The cria that died last month didn't have the energy to do so, but because we didn't have any experience with normal babies, we didn't know he wasn't normal. This one is full of beans.

Hooray! I’m so relieved and happy. Now we can focus our attention on getting El Barto ready for the show in two weeks.

Yikes!
M

Baby Pictures!

http://www.wou.edu/~andersonm/alpaca/babypics3-05.htm

8:30 am, March 7, 2005

Details later!

et-farms.com and "Cria Watch"

I've been avoiding grading by trying to post our website this morning. The result is the inaugural page for www.et-farms.com. Currently, it has one picture of two alpacas and a link to this blog, but very soon it will have a sales list, etc.

Today Charles has flown off to a wedding in the Bay Area, so I am obliged to stay on the ranch on cria watch. Consuella is now due in one week exactly, which means she could drop her baby at any time. Nine times out of ten, this happens quickly and without human intervention, but those one out of ten times, someone has got to be there to help. That's me this weekend!

Cria watch consists of somebody (me, my husband, or my mother) lounging around the house doing whatever work or television watching we need to do with a leisurely stroll to the window once an hour or so. We watch Consuella to see if she is doing anything unusual like rolling a lot, cushing strangely, squatting at the poop pile with no "results," and the like. The only unusual behavior she's been exhibiting, however, is general bitchiness. She reportedly spent Wednesday chasing the other alpacas around the pasture in a fit of crabbiness. I suspect she doesn't feel very comfortable because she had been a demure, sweet alpaca up until then.

Eventually, she will show some signs of labor and I am hopeful that she will have an uneventful birth. Until then, someone will be checking on her during daylight hours.

Off to the window!
m

Picking Sticks

Picking Sticks
2/28/2005

When we bought our farm, it was literally a forest. In order to raise animals, we spent the better part of nine months clearing the land, burning the stumps and debris from the clearing, and fencing the pastures. We currently have two pastures: Pasture One and Pasture Zero—also known as “the maternity ward” because it has fencing more appropriate for little crias. Even though our animals arrived in December, our pastures are not what you would call “grazing ready.” In fact, Pasture One is little more than a field of sticks and mud, and Pasture Zero—which is has more trees, and so, more little sticks— promised to erupt into knee-deep poison oak come springtime.

This means that Charles and I have been engaging in a chore the past few months that we affectionately call “Picking Sticks.” It involves bending over and picking up loose sticks on the ground. This needs to be done so we can till the soil later this summer and plant a real pasture. Lately, picking sticks has also involved using the DR Trimmer/Mower that my grandfather gave us. That is certainly the tool for the job of hacking down poison oak shoots.

Other technology that has helped in picking sticks includes a heavy comb rake for collecting and lifting more than one stick at a time, a wheel barrow for transporting debris from one end of the pasture to the other, and kerosene. Why kerosene? As far as Charles is concerned, the best part of picking sticks is how you get rid of debris like this…you burn it. A couple weeks ago, Charles used gasoline to start the burn pile. This resulted in a column of flame about twenty feet high and a large “whoosh!” Kerosene is not as likely to evaporate your eyebrows in this way.

The major downside to picking sticks is the fact that most of the sticks involved are poison oak. Both Charles and I are allergic to poison oak, although I am more allergic than he is. I tend to break out in wretched rashes that travel to many places on my body. Recently, my outbreaks of poison oak have been better, and I attribute some of this to a product called Tecnu. Oh, what wonderful stuff! It rinses away the oils from poison oak if you wash within eight hours of contact, and it helps reduce the spread and duration of rashes that pop up. I need to buy stock in that company.

We spent Saturday picking sticks in Pasture Zero, and although it still isn’t perfectly clean, we feel it is safe for little crias to play in, and it looks so much better than before! It no longer resembles a temperate jungle. We’ll never be able to make pasture zero into a park, but we like the fact that it looks like we tried. But now you know how much work it is to clean up an area like this. We wonder everyday how the pioneers did it.

m

Little Mu Shu

http://www.wou.edu/~andersonm/alpaca/cria2-13-05.htm

I am in the process of writing a detailed account of this, so be patient. The long and the short of it is that he had a severe birth defect and died quitely in his sleep.

In more uplifting news, our next baby is due two weeks from today! We have our fingers crossed.

m

In the beginning...

...there were two people, Charles and Maren. They moved to Oregon after expelling themselves from the garden known as "Berkeley" to teach the youth to write essays and computer programs.

They bought thirteen acres. And it was good. They built a house. And that was good, too. Then they rested, and looked out on all this goodness and said unto themselves, "Wouldn't it be nice to have some little critters to take care of?"

And so began the quest.

They asked their parents who replied, "Oh, grandchildren would be great!"

They asked their dog-park friends who replied, "Oh, dogs are great!"

They asked their horse friends who replied, "Oh, horses are so great!"

But they were not satisfied.

One day their wanderings brought them to an alpaca show, so they went in.

The alpacas were covered in long, crimpy fiber. That was good. They were small and friendly. That was good, too. They hummed in a charming manner. That was very good. Then they went to a seminar on farm tax advantages. That was the clincher.

Two years, one barn and 2,000 feet of fence later, Charles and Maren had four alpacas.

And it was good.