Alpacas in Smart Money!

http://www.smartmoney.com/smallbiz/index.cfm?story=20061218

So, you want to start an alpaca farm? This links to a story about starting a small business while keeping your "day job," and it includes a couple that started an alpaca farm while remaining teachers. It's what Charles and I did.
m

Evergreen Terrace's X-mas 2006

Hello everyone!

We've had a busy year, naturally, and it took a couple of interesting turns. We've have a pretty good year with the alpacas, artistic endeavors, website building, consulting and caring for family members.

First of all, Maren has been busy writing, but branched out this year into filmmaking as well. Maren and a friend made two short films together this year. One was a documentary about alpacas at the Heart of the Valley Alpaca show.

The alpacas are doing great. (Snowball is the Rudolf impersonator in the picture.) We have two adorable babies who were born at the end of the summer. They play together and are endlessly entertaining. The male, Willie, was born two weeks early, but he is robust now, and the color of a new penny. The girl, Lisa, was born a month later, and is a very light fawn.

We have had a productive year entering alpaca fleeces in fleece shows. Bart and Duffman have each won one fleece ribbon, but Milhouse has won two, including third place out of a class of fourteen in a spin-off competition. We are very proud.

We want to reiterate that everyone is welcome to come visit us on the ranch.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Charles, Maren, Tigger, the kitties, and the alpacas.

November Updates and random photo

This is the random alpaca picture of the day. Milhouse was backlit nicely by the sunset in September.










It’s about time for us to spit-test and progesterone test Consuella. It has been three weeks since her last breeding with Barto. I hope that all tests show her to be solidly pregnant, but given the difficulty the pros at NWA had in finding her pregnancy last year, I’m fearful that she will be equally difficult to pin down this year.

In other news, the rains have come back and, despite our French drain, the barn still floods. However, we aren’t in the “water flowing through the barn” stage or the “water standing in the barn” yet as we were last year. We have some mud, and a pool of water where the clay floor of the barn is saturated with urine. The boys are a muddy mess. We have made progress, but it is still disheartening that there is still so much water in that stall.

Maybe we should build a dike next year.

Breeding updates

Cabernet has been confirmed pregnant with a progesterone test. Later on in the season, we may ultrasound her, but we didn't last year, so I don't think it is necessary.

Consuella's progesterone was so low that we decided to tease her again with Kuna. It could just be that she doesn't accept El Barto's authority yet, so to speak. He'll get more macho as he matures.

Anyway, Kuna was able to get Consuella down, and Bart was right there to finish the job (after 1/2 hour!). A few days later, we brought Kuna back to tease her again, and she spit and threw a fit. She did the same thing on Tuesday, so we're pretty sure she thinks she's pregnant. We'll tease her and do another progesterone test in a couple weeks to confirm it.

However, we won't be able to tease her with Kuna anymore. Polly was able to sell him to someone in Connecticut. He's leaving in a couple days. Polly is sad, but he'll be happy as a clam there with all sorts of girls to play with.

Our final bit of news is that Dawn is at NWA for her date with Pachacuti. This is a re-breeding because she lost her pregnancy sometime last spring. She was bred on Saturday, and spit off on Tuesday. They'll try again on Friday, but she may have taken on the first try this time. Keep your fingers crossed!

So, we may finally have everyone pregnant. Yippee!

2006 Fiber Odyssey Spin-off ribbon

Milhouse won a ribbon!

Back in July I sent off 2 oz. of Milhouse's fleece to Idaho for this spin-off contest, and promptly forgot about it until I received this package in the mail today!

Milhouse won third place in the Fawns for his fleece, out of FOURTEEN entries! He lost the most points for lack of crimp and architecture in his fleece, but obviously, that isn't enough to hold back a nice yarn!

I'm so proud. :)

m

Alpacamania

The Alpacamania show was October 7 and 8 in Medford, Oregon. I had never competed in a show besides Heart of the Valley, so I was eager to bring one of our animals to an outside show, plus I wanted to take Duffman to a show before the next HOTV in May when he will be 20 months old. I convinced Polly McCrea to send a couple of her animals along, too, so that we could split the price of a pen.

The animals we brought were: Duffman, our Hemingway grandson; Eli, Polly's Tocto son; and Montiero, Polly's black boy who won a ribbon at HOTV '06. We supposed that Montiero had a really good chance of winning a ribbon, Duffy had a chance if he had 2 testicles that day (since he had a habit of hiding one), and that Eli was just there for kicks.

It turns out that Eli, who was scared spitless the entire show, was the one who won a blue ribbon. The judge was very impressed with his "showmanship," which floored me. I didn't even think he was talking about us as he went on and on about how well this animal was showing, etc.





Duffy ended up with a fourth place ribbon out of four, even though his testicle was nowhere to be found. The judge was very kind about giving us a ribbon for what can be a disqualifying fault.





Monty didn't get a damned thing, which was the biggest surprise of the show. However, it was understandable. He was in a class of thirteen, all but two of which were older than he. They were all lovely, and the first and second places were won by near-two year olds. It was disappointing. However, I have never seen such a strong class of black animals.

We spent the time we weren't showing talking to people and handing out flyers for El Barto's stud services and Polly's retirement sale of alpacas and her ranch. (See her alpacanation [http://www.alpacanation.com/farmsandbreeders/03_viewfarm.asp?name=10257] site for more information.) I gave out all of Polly's flyers and I had to make more copies of ours since I left one at every stall at the show, and handed them out to people. We hope to get one or two breedings for Bart out of it (which would pay for the show, plus some), and maybe sell some of Polly's animals.


Plus, the show was lots of fun. :)

Barnyard surgery

Dawn isn't going to NWA this weekend because we had the huge, quarter-sized corn removed from her hind foot yesterday. The vet (and us) was eager to take off the corn because 1) it continued to grow, 2) Dawn isn't pregnant or lactating, 3) we weren't 100% sure it was a corn (read: we hoped it wasn't a tumor). So the vet sedated her, and removed it right there in the barnyard.

Now, my little brother is a surgery resident, and I'll bet he had never sutured something while kneeling in the gravel while shooing stray chickens away.

All went well, and Dawn is now sporting a pink bandaged leg.

This does complicate re-breeding her because, ideally, we'd keep her on our farm until the stitches are out...another 2 weeks. This presents two problem: 1) the stud we'd like to re-breed her to leaves at the end of October, and 2) the later we breed her, the more likely she'll have her baby after school starts.

So much for my well-thought-out plan for pre-school cria. :)

Dawn isn't pregnant

We had some disappointing news before I left for Alpacamania on Oct 5. We had a couple people look at Dawn and they confirmed our worst fear: Dawn isn't pregnant. I had been saying for some time that she wasn't big enough to be late-term, but I held out hope.

It turns out that Dawn is actually just fat. This is a first for her. We think she lost the baby when she was so sick in the spring with diarrhea,and she became so painfully thin. We changed her diet to a high-calorie, high-fat feed and put her on a daily diet of probiotics. That fattened her up, but it must have been after she lost the pregnancy.

The bad news is that we've lost a year of "production" out of her. The good news is that she is fat and happy and is in perfect condition to get pregnant. We're working out the details for when she can go back to NWA and see Pachacuti again sometime this month.

El Barto does his job!

El Barto has done his job in one try!

The female we bred to El Barto, Consuella, has spit him off twice! This usually means that a female is pregnant! We will have her progesterone tested in a couple weeks to make sure.

This is good news because it shows that not only is El Barto a potent stud, but that he can "get the job done" in one try! This will be useful information to give people who'd like to use him as a mobile herdsire (the sale is still on, everyone!).

Still still waiting

We're on Day 16 of being over due, Dawn! It's time to have a baby so that Charles and I can get on with our lives!

So much for planning. We had it all worked out so that the critters would be done birthin' by the time school started. We also had it worked out so that the babies would be born within 2 weeks of each other so that we wouldn't be on cria watch forever.

Then Cabernet had her baby 2 weeks early and Dawn is working on 2 1/2 weeks late (so far). Consuella was two days late, which was basically right on time.

Alpacas are such contrary animals. Dawn keeps looking at us like, "What?" whenever we look at her through the binoculars from the kitchen. The baby is kicking and rolling around inside her and seems very interested in getting out.

Ugh, it's frustrating. But that is the way it goes.

I am now trying to plan what to do next weekend when we are going to Central Point, Oregon, for an alpaca show. If Dawn hasn't popped before then, we are going to have to make more arrangements than if she has had her baby. Hiring a farm sitter is much more expensive than having my mom come out to feed the critters at night. The farm sitter would have to sit at the farm and watch Dawn, assist during the potential birth and call the vet if necessary. It's more time consuming because she can't leave the farm at all before noon, and has to check on Dawn every couple hours after that.

Well, the good news is that the baby is still alive inside her, and she is healthy and happy (if pig-headedly stubborn and uncaring about how inconvenient she is).

Still waiting on Dawn

Dawn is now eight days late. She's going to mess up our plans if she doesn't have her baby soon.

She has minimal udder development, but her hind-end is definitely relaxed (it jiggles when she walks). Her vulva is slightly larger, but not enough to scream "Today!" at me. She passed what we think was a mucus plug on Monday, but that can happen several days before actual birth.

We are planning on sneaking off to the coast on Saturday as my birthday present. It would suck mightily if we had to put that off because Dawn was still waiting to deliver. The weather is supposed to be perfect this weekend, and there are no guarantees about next weekend.

Plus, school starts on Monday, and I have to teach beginning at 10 am. This means that Charles would have to take care of things on Monday, were she to deliver. That isn't to say that he couldn't take care of things, but we would both prefer that both of us were there for the event.

The baby is kicking and thrashing about inside her, so we know it's alive and well. The baby isn't doing the creepy Aliens thing as Lisa was inside her momma, but it's still a little odd to see it writhing about in there.

Anyway, any day now we'll have another cria to coo over. I'm thinking I'd like to re-breed Dawn just a week earlier so that next year she won't bump up so close to the start of school.

We are planning a mobile breeding for Dawn at NWA, too, since she had that allergic reaction in August. We'd like to keep an eye on her. I think we'll be using their stud Impact this year.

That's all for now!
m

Link to Alumna profile

http://www.alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/profile/profile_anderson.php

I had been looking for this since February when the article came out. I finally found it!

This is a link to the article published about me and our alpaca farm in the Mount Holyoke Alumna Quarterly. I was interviewed in September 2005.

Enjoy!

Little Lisa has arrived!

This is baby Lisa!

She the first female cria born on our ranch, so we are very excited!

We worked outside until 12:30 PM this morning. Consuella (mom) was acting normally. Her teats weren't any larger than they have been in the last week, she was eating fine, and her vulva wasn't any larger than it has been this week.




However, after we showered and had worked for a bit, Charles peeked out the window. He called to me, saying, "Hey, what's that next to Consuella?"

That something turned out to be little Lisa. Sneaky Consuella had delivered all by herself, without showing any signs of labor, hard or otherwise. In fact, if Lisa weren't white, Charles might have mistaken her for Willie and not said anything. Consuella certainly looked content and unconcerned.




We went to the pasture to take a look. Lisa popped up to standing and then tottered over to get a drink. She must have been less than half an hour old because she was still wet.

We decided to towel-dry her and dip her umbilical cord in iodine while we were in the pasture. This is a much more difficult feat than it was with Cabernet's baby because Consuella hates it when people touch her babies. She bites and spits, so one of us had to hold a towel up for protection while the other dove in and worked with the baby.



After a couple hours of quiet (away from boisterous Willie), we swapped pastures so that Willie and his mom could be in the barn and Lisa and her mom could be outside without being bounced. We hope that he will wear himself out running the fence so that when everyone is in the barn tonight, he won't have the energy to play too roughly. Otherwise, we might have to separate them in a separate stall.


Well, that was exciting! I'll get statistics and details for you later!


maren

Herdsire Stud fee sale!

El Barto
Introductory mobile stud fee special
Sliding scale $550-$950 until 1-1-07

This is our stud, El Barto. We are offering a fall 2006 sale for the first five breedings (total) on his stud fee for mobile breedings. We don't have the facililities for traditional breedings (we don't have a proper quarantine area), so this is our compromise.

El Barto has lovely, 19 micron fleece with high-frequency crimp. It is delicious to work with.

He is a Glacial Storm son and an Augustus grandson. He is also the son of our import Dawn who has incredible 22 micoron fleece at NINE years old.

Go to our website for details: http://www.et-farms.com/herdsire.html

We'll go up to 100 miles for the cost of the breeding, and charge $.75 mile thereafter.

m

Still waiting on Consuella

Consuella is due tomorrow, but we've been watching her closely for the last two weeks. I have been sure that she was going to deliver a couple different times this week because of a couple things: 1) her udder is pretty full, although not engorged, and 2) the "alien" thing.

On Monday I noticed that something was moving under Consuella's tail. There was a bulge by her anus that was moving in and out. It was very creepy looking, but it was obviously the cria's feet. I thought, "Aha! The cria is in position and so Consuella is going to have her baby today!"

Not so.

I saw the feet again on Tuesday. "Surely today!" I thought. Nope.

We've seen the feet moving every day since, and Consuella still shows no signs of going into labor. She is very content to eat, chew her cud and look at us with her wise look, mildly puzzled by our attempts to look at her backside.

The best news out of all this is that there are feet in the birth canal. This is much better than any other single body part. I'm not even concerned whether they are front or back feet. Feet in the birth canal mean that we should have an uneventful birth (knock on wood).

Eventually, anyway.
m

Dawn Scare

We had a scare yesterday with our 10-year-old import, Dawn. At breakfast, she was normal, wolfing down her pellets, etc. When we got back outside to scoop poop, she was standing with her head down, drooling and coughing. She was obviously miserable.

I called another alpaca owner who has many more years of experience than we do and asked her what she thought we should do. We decided it was probably a case of "choke" where a blob of food gets caught in the esophogus and the alpaca tries to cough it up. You are supposed to massage the neck to see if there are any hard lumps and then try to break it up with your fingers. I tried this, but I couldn't feel any lumps.

We finally called the vet after about an hour of Dawn alternately coughing or standing very still going "uhn, uhn, uhn," and then holding her breath. The vet told us to get her into the barn where it was probably cooler (it got up to 94 yesterday).

By the time the vet arrived, Dawn was much worse. She had cushed down and was looking more and more depressed. The excitement of shooing her into the barn had caused another coughing fit and she was exhausted. She didn't even get up to get away from the vet, although she spent the entire visit with him screaming as only Dawn can (this made listening to her lungs difficult).

Dr. MacGuire heard fluid on her lungs and decided that perhaps she was having an allergic reaction to something. He gave her an antihistamine, a diuretic, and a tranquilizer that acted as a mild cough suppressant. Within five minutes she was breathing better, coughing less, and within an hour (after the vet had gone) she was up and eating.

We don't know what caused this reaction, but we have a syringe of antihistamine in the fridge from now in just in case. I'm thinking that she may have been stung by a bee or something.

It's the weirdest thing.

Alpaca comics

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

Check out our new gallery. Not only do we have pictures up on Flickr.com, but I have discovered another time-wasting device: a program called "Comic Life" which allows one to take photos or drawings and plop them into a comic format. It has automatic speech balloons. So fun!

I've posted the first alpaca comic, entitled "Pool Party!" Enjoy.

m

Mobile Breeding

http://www.ideal-alpaca.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=feature.display&feature_id=160

We are going to try mobile breeding with El Barto. We are not really in a position to quarantine animals sent to us effectively, so we think that this is a good compromise. We can disinfect a trailer and get health certificates more easily than we can build a quarantine pasture.

This link is to Mike Safley's article on mobile breeding.

m

More baby pictures

He's so handsome!

Look at that bright fiber!

So content.

We are now over 26#, so he's put on ten pounds since he was born three weeks ago.

We are thinking of calling him "ETF G.K. Willie" for Grounds Keeper Willie on the Simpsons, the only character on that show that has red hair.

Flikr address

http://www.flickr.com/photos/et-farms_alpacas/

I'm lazy. I admit it. I am going to forgo re-vamping the photo gallery on our website in favor of using super-easy Flikr.

I've got some photos up already. Take a peek!
maren