Is It Me Or Are The Winds Getting Worse?

Inca Peeks Around The Corner Of The Shelter During Last Friday's Snow Storm

 

We are used to windy weather in the spring in Eastern New Mexico, but it seems as if the wind is getting more extreme.  Yesterday we were treated to sustained winds of 42 mph with the occasional 50+ mph gust thrown in for good measure!  It’s quite something to look out into the pasture and see our feed wagon moving across the pasture propelled by wind power!

 

Raking up the poop and taking the wheelbarrows out to the compost pile in those high winds was quite an experience.  Putting out hay was also fun as we tried to get it into the feeders before it all blew away.

 

The alpacas seemed to take the high winds pretty much in their stride.  We did see one or two watery eyes, which is hardly surprising considering all of the dust blowing around.  We will check the herd today and make sure everyone’s eyes look good.  For the most part the alpacas stayed cushed, getting up to eat and drink and make a mad dash between the shelters.

 

By the end of the day I think everyone was tired of the wind except two of the llamas Maya and Inca who decided to have a pronging session around the pasture.  It was wonderful to see them running and pronging, they looked very elegant and they interspersed their pronging with squeals of delight.  I’m not entirely sure what there was to be delighted about but I wonder if perhaps they were getting some extra lift from the high winds and that is what was pleasing them.  It’s not often that the llamas have a good pronging session so something must have tickled their fancy – either that or the wind had caused them to loose their sanity by the end of the day!

 

Rosemary

Warning – Crias In The Pasture May be Heavier Than They Look!

 

With the snow clearing from the pastures it was time to get back to routine chores and maintenance tasks.

 

One task that needed doing was weighing the fall crias; we like to weigh them about once a month and knew we had gone past that time period.  Our teenage helper Bethany was with us over the weekend and so it seemed an ideal opportunity to get all seven fall crias weighed.  While I can weigh alpacas on my own it is always so much easier to have someone else around to open gates and write down the weights during a weighing session.

 

Bethany and I started off the weighing session while Ric dumped the poop wagons.  Nochi was the first cria we selected and as I picked her up to carry her to the scales I realized that Nochi was considerably heavier than the last time I had weighed her!  I made it to the scales with Nochi, but my muscles were telling me they were ready to put her down.  Nochi’s weight made me think that it is also time to train the crias to stand on the scales on their own.  Up until now we have used the tare function on our scales, which deducts our weight from the total weight of handler and cria displaying the crias weight only.  That tare function is a handy tool especially for those of us who are challenged in the area of mental arithmetic, but as heavy as Nochi felt it was time for her to stand on her own four feet.

 

Nochi weighed in at 52.8 lbs!  No wonder my muscles were telling me to put her down!  We still had six more crias to weigh, this was going to be quite the work out!  I decided that while I could carry the crias one way to the scales I would walk them back using my catch rope – one of the tools I use to start halter training.

 

Bethany and I continued with the cria weighing, but had already decided that Ric would get the job of carrying Chandra (the biggest of the fall crias) to the scale.  As it turned out Ric was soon back and put to work carrying crias.

 

All of the crias weighed in at over 50 lbs.  It’s hard to think that those tiny crias we had in the fall were now that big, but it is good to know that they are healthy and growing.  Even our Little Man (aka Windrush Peruvian Tonka) weighed in at 50.9 lbs!  Way to go Little Man!

 

Knowing that Chandra was the largest we left her until the end, by which time Ric had announced that not only did her refuse to carry Chandra back from the scales he was also refusing to carry her to the scales (he kept muttering something about his back).  So we introduced Chandra to the catch rope, got her moving while wearing it and over to the scales we went to discover that our little Chandra a mere 17 lbs when she was born on October 7 was now 74.4 lbs!

 

With the crias all doing so well we need to start planning weaning as it won’t be long before they are ready to wean (and Chandra is already more than ready but I would rather wean her with her group of friends than alone).  Halter training is also on the agenda, while all the fall crias are used to the catch rope it is now time to go a little further with the halter training and help them to learn to be completely at ease with wearing a halter and walking on a lead rope.  Besides which Ric has told me that he absolutely refuses to carry any one of those crias to the scale again – and I can’t say that I blame him (although he could move the scales nearer to the girls pasture which would also solve the problem!)

 

Rosemary

Brrr!

A Snow Covered Dream

 

That was the word for the day yesterday when our temperatures plummeted, the winds picked up and the snow fell.

 

We were initially forecast to receive 5 – 7 inches of snow, but there was nowhere near that amount on the ground except for where the snow piled into drifts.  I suspect that whatever snowfall was supposed to be ours blew south in the high winds.

 

The alpacas were huddled up and snow covered by the time we woke up in the morning and I couldn’t resist taking the picture above of poor Dream who was just caked in snow.  Dream had created herself a warm dry spot by the shelter and did not want to get up, but the sight of the morning feed bowls soon changed her mind, persuading her to jump up and join in with the morning feed.

 

Marti who is here for breeding was a concern for us as she was shorn before she arrived here this week.  Fortunately Marti is a smart girl and was cushed in the corner of the shelter in the deep straw.  She was a little shivery though so after giving her a little alfalfa and her morning ration of pellets we put a blanket on her and also covered her with one of our sheep covers to act as a windbreak and to keep the blanket dry.  We kept a watch on her all day and she was up and active, eating hay and occasionally venturing out to the poop pile.  I bet she was wishing she could have her fleece back for at least a day.

 

Little Candytuft fared well in the snow, despite being very young she is a sturdy girl who already weighs close to 40 lbs and she already has a good staple length on her.    I didn’t see her looking cold or shivery all day, which is good, and by the afternoon she was skipping around in the snow.

 

The alpacas were all treated to some extra hay including some alfalfa, warm soaked beet pulp shreds and buckets of warm water.  They all remained active during the day, checking out the various hay feeders and running from shelter to shelter.  Of course they also decided that they didn’t really need to venture outside to use a poop pile and so by the end of the day the poop piles in the shelter were large and spreading.

 

Once again Mother Nature gave us a sharp reminder of how quickly the weather can turn in this part of the world, dropping us down into the 20’s and 30’s and sending us to the closet to pull out our insulated coveralls and alpaca socks once again.  It is incredible to think that the day before we had sunny skies and temperatures in the 70’s.

 

Today we are supposed to warm up just as dramatically as we cooled down, the snow will melt, the pastures will dry out and I’m betting Miss Marti will be just a little bit more comfortable than she was yesterday!

 

Rosemary

Scoundrels!

The Girls Help Themselves to Hay

 

What can I say?  Leave a herd of alpacas alone long enough with a bale of their favorite teff hay which has been “secured” in a pen and one of them will figure out how to get the pen gate open allowing the herd an “all you can eat” buffet on the bale!

We had one bale of teff hay left and decided to store it in the pen we use for big bales in the girls pasture so that we could ration it out a little every day.  Word soon spread among the herd that the teff hay was there and the girls happily spent their day pulling pieces through the chain link of the pen.  That teff hay tastes so good and our girls wanted more.

Maya the llama was the first to lead the assault on the big bale pen.  Using the chain link material on the gate to the big bale pen she managed to climb up high enough to where she could reach her neck out and just manage to nibble at the edge of the bale.  This wasn’t the easiest feat in the world but Maya was determined despite being told off by Ric for climbing on the chain link gate.

Having been discouraged from accessing the bale by going over the fence there was only one alternative, go under the fence.

We have two alpacas at the farm that are champions at putting their heads under the last rung of any portable panel or gate in order to reach anything that is tasty on the other side.  Carina started this trend, reaching under her feeding pen each morning to steal one of the bowls from the group of girls in the adjoining pen.  Carina also discovered that there was sufficient space for her to get her head and neck under the gate of the big bale pen.

Carina is one of those girls who puts her energy into milk production and tends to be slim, so when we saw her getting access to the big bale by putting her head under the gate we were not too concerned.  We checked to make sure she had sufficient room to get her head in and out of the gap under the gate and allowed her to continue stealing some extra calories.

Glow’s cria Nochi then noticed Carina’s trick and decided that she too could steal hay from under the gate and was soon joining Carina.

Having accessed the hay from under the gate it didn’t take long for Carina to figure out that she could use her head (in a physical way rather than an intellectual way) to push up on the gate just enough to unlatch the lock. 

So it was that yesterday afternoon I glanced out of the window to be greeted by the sight of the herd piling in that gate to help themselves to teff hay – boy were they happy!

While I would love to give them free access to the teff hay, it is the last bale we have and we are trying to make it last.  We do have other hay to feed the alpacas but it will be August before we have access to another load of teff hay.  So for now the gate to the big bale pen has been secured not only with the latch but also with a strap that prevents the alpacas and llamas from maneuvering the gate in any direction – and I have a herd of alpacas who sit longingly outside that pen quietly thinking about how they can once again get free access to that bale of teff hay.

Rosemary

And The Latest Visitors Are…

 

Donna Given and her alpaca Marti.  Donna and her daughter Tamara Garel own Kiss Me Alpacas in Bandera, Texas and are long time customers of ours.  Last spring they brought us three of their alpaca girls for breeding Marti, Celeste and Cariad.

 

Celeste was bred to Windrush Jennifer’s Zindel and delivered a beautiful beige daughter on St. Patrick’s Day (March 17), Cariad who is a daughter of our Enchantment’s Prince Regent is due to deliver any day now.  Cariad was bred to our Windrush Moonlight Surprise so we soon will have another Moonie cria on the ground.

 

Marti unfortunately lost her pregnancy in the seventh month of gestation.  The seventh month can be a tricky time in a pregnancy as that is when the fetus really starts to put a demand on the dams system.  Donna and Tamara rushed Marti to the vet when they realized she might be aborting her cria, the vet kept Marti in for observation but unfortunately was unable to stop her from losing her cria.  Following the loss of the cria Donna and Tamara had blood work run on Marti and the cria was also examined, but the vet was unable to establish a reason for Marti having lost her cria.

 

So Marti is coming back to us for rebreeding and hopefully this pregnancy will go to term without any problem.

 

It will be good as always to see Donna, Tamara had to stay at home to keep an eye on Cariad and also had to work so was unable to travel with Donna.

 

I do hope the weather stays warm as Donna and Tamara had their shearing day last weekend and so Marti is newly shorn.  Our forecast did mention the chance of snow on Friday – I hope it doesn’t get that cold or poor Marti will really feel it!

 

Should it turn really cold we can always pen Marti in a stall inside one of the barns with some deep straw and I even have a blanket she can wear if need be.  Fingers crossed though the temperatures will stay warm enough where all we will get is some gentle rain – we need the moisture but for Marti’s sake I am really hoping that the snow stays away!

 

Rosemary

Getting Acquainted

Orchid and Candytuft our guest alpacas

 

The weekend was a full one.   First we settled Orchid and her cria Candytuft in to the quarantine pasture with Ma Cushla and Primera, weighing them first so that we can monitor Candytuft’s weight and also know if Orchid is holding her weight during her visit.  Orchid is a little on the heavy side, but as Candytuft is a strong, robust cria she will probably nurse a lot of that extra weight off Orchid.  Our farm must be such a dramatic change for those two girls after the lush green pastures of Louisiana.

 

We then spent time getting caught up with Dale, finding out what he had been up to since he retired from the Air Force and updating each other with news of friends and acquaintances. 

 

Dale had asked us if we could spend Saturday educating him in good and bad points to look for when purchasing alpacas and also showing him routine tasks such as toe nail trimming, teeth trimming, our feeding practices and other aspects of alpaca care.  So Dale got a pretty intensive Alpaca 101 course in a day!  It was a lot of information for him to take in, but he seemed appreciative of the information we shared with him and said he felt more confident in assessing alpacas by the time he left us on Sunday.

 

Part of Saturday morning was spent helping Dale decide which herdsire he wanted to use on Orchid.  We looked at Orchid first and established her strong and weak points and then showed him our herdsires and also their fleeces from last year.  Our Enchantment’s Prince Regent was Dale’s selection and I am sure that Regent and Orchid will make an outstanding match.

 

After that we went over the breeding contract and also talked about contracts in general to help Dale when he comes to drawing up contracts for his own alpaca clients.

 

We covered a lot of information during Dale’s visit, it was a lot to take in and remember but Dale knows that if he forgets anything or needs to clarify anything he only has to pick up the phone and call us.

 

During his visit Dale commented on how relaxed our alpacas were and how our girls go into their different feeding pens at feeding time.  He also said he hopes Orchid and Candytuft will learn to be that relaxed while they are with us.

 

For now Orchid and Candytuft are wary of us and still getting used to their new surroundings.  We will take things easy with them initially, not making an effort to interact with them unless they come up to us.  So far Orchid has come up to sniff me a couple of times, but Candytuft will only stand behind Orchid and peer around her to look at me – she will come around in time I am sure.   We will handle them with care and respect during their visit and in time they will learn to relax around us.

 

For many alpacas one of the biggest hurdles in human interaction is trust and we work hard to raise our alpacas to know that they can trust us.  During their stay Orchid and Candytuft will learn to trust us too, already they are watching how our alpacas interact with us which in itself will help them feel more at ease with us.  Alpacas being herd animals do pick up on the behavior of others in the herd.

 

Once quarantine is over we will introduce Orchid and Candytuft to our main female herd.  It will be nice for Candytuft to be able to play with the fall crias, while she is quite a bit younger than them she is a good size for her age and will not have any problem joining in the cria games in the evening.

 

Already though Candytuft has an admirer.  I discovered Little Man (aka Windrush Peruvian Tonka) looking longingly through the fence at her on Sunday morning.  Usually Little Man is one of the first to go into the cria pen at feeding time, but on Sunday morning he was completely distracted by Candytuft’s presence.  I’ve told Little Man that he will get a chance to meet Candytuft soon, but somehow I get the feeling that for him it will not be soon enough.  He may be a little but he’s telling me he’s definitely a man in alpaca terms, a herdsire in the making – one day Little Man, one day.

 

Rosemary

The First of the Farm Visitors Arrive

 

Yesterday afternoon our friend and fellow alpaca breeder Dale Amer arrived at the farm bringing with him a date for one of our alpaca boys.  Dale drove from Alexandria, Louisiana, a long drive especially when you are hauling a trailer with a female alpaca and her young cria.

 

We had the quarantine pen set up ready for the arrival of the two alpacas, and Orchid (the adult female) and her cria Candytuft soon made themselves at home.  Our girls all lined up at the fence line to view the new arrivals and our fall crias were very curious about Candytuft, staring at her through the fence and watching her explore the quarantine pen.  To keep Orchid and Candytuft company we also put our two non-reproductive females Primera and Ma Cushla in the quarantine pen.  It is so nice to have a couple of females who we can use for quarantine companions, especially when you only have one or two alpacas arriving to go into quarantine.  Alpacas really do like to be in groups and by providing Primera and Ma Cushla as companions we find that the visiting alpacas soon settle down and start to feel at ease.

 

Dale is a relatively new alpaca breeder and so today will be devoted to answering any burning questions he has and showing him how we manage our herd at our farm.  He will also get to select which male he wishes to breed Orchid to.

 

Orchid and Candytuft will remain in quarantine for three weeks and then we will breed Orchid.  Hopefully she will get pregnant easily and it won’t be too long before she is headed back to Louisiana, although in view of the long journey ahead of her she will probably not return home until she is at least 60 days pregnant.

 

What was good to see last night was that at dusk Candytuft was galloping around the pasture as a happy cria will do and Orchid was standing at the hayrack alongside Ma Cushla and Primera.  Looks like the long journey did not bother our two visitors too much!

 

In the next few days we will have another visiting alpaca arrive – breeding season is definitely starting and according to our herdsires it’s not a moment too soon!

 

Rosemary

Time for a Manicure

This week we have been working our way through the groups of alpacas checking toenails and trimming them as needed.  We check toenails once a month and typically find we end up trimming them about every other month.  Each alpaca has a different rate of growth of his or her toenails.  Often we find that the white toenails grow a lot faster than the dark toenails.

 

This picture is of Echo’s toenails, as you can see he is one of those alpacas who grows toenails really well.  Interestingly his dam and his sisters have the same trait.  Echo’s toenails definitely need a trim!

Echo's Toenails In Need Of A Trim

 

When trimming toenails we aim to finish with the toenail level with the pad of the alpaca’s foot.  We use toenail trimmers that are very similar to the bypass pruning shears used on roses.  Ric’s hands are strong enough that he can often trim each toenail in one cut, my hands are not as strong and so I tend to trim one side then the other on each toenail.

 

It’s important to keep alpaca toenails trimmed, over time they will get so long that they start to curl under and can cause the alpaca discomfort when walking.  The only time we hold off regular toenail trimming is on a female who is at the last stage of her pregnancy.  Some pregnant female alpacas tolerate toenail trimming whatever stage of pregnancy they are at but others get worked up about being handled toward the end of their pregnancy.  In that case we hold off any toenail trimming for that pregnant female until after her cria is born.

 

As we are on soft sandy soil there is little chance for our alpaca’s toenails to be worn down just by walking, as they would do if we had rocky ground.  To help the situation though we have put cement paving blocks around our automatic waterers so that the alpacas have to walk on the cement to get to the water.  Just having that small area of cement does help keep the toenails down and the alpacas like to lie on it during the summer heat too as it is nice and cool.

 

Trimming an alpacas toenails is an easy job and only takes a few minutes.  With as many alpacas as we have on the farm we do tend to work on them in groups rather than try and do the herd all in one day, but they are soon all done – manicured, pedicured but I do draw the line at painting their toenails!

 

Rosemary

Hang on Queen!

 

Our alpaca Queen is one of the grand dams of the pasture.  Now eleven years old, she is able to rule over the younger alpacas by just looking at them.  She can throw a look that says “you wouldn’t dare” and the younger alpacas agree, they would not dare to cross our Queen.

 

Queen is an alpaca who breeds easily, births easily and has beautiful, robust, vigourous cria.  Her last cria Atlas recently took 1^st in his class at the TxOLAN Alpaca Spectacular and is a striking herdsire in the making.  The only time Queen has lost a pregnancy was after she moved here from her previous owners farm.  She was seven years old at the time and had never been off her home farm, the stress of the move was just too much for her I guess and while she never outwardly showed any signs of stress she did absorb her pregnancy.  Once rebred though she carried her next pregnancy to term and has never looked back since.

 

When Queen lost her pregnancy it drove home to me just how bonded these alpacas become with their herd mates.  I had already decided that Queen would live out her days here and purchased her knowing that she would become one of our foundation herd, but the reaction from her being moved here helped me decide that once our alpaca girls reach a certain age we need to plan on them staying with us for the rest of their lives.  To move them to a different herd just becomes too hard on them.

 

This past weekend I noticed Queen was a little uncomfortable, she laid around more than usual, rolling on one hip and pushing her legs out to the side.  She did eat but not as heartily as usual and it was obvious that she was not feeling 100%.  I could see her cria moving every now and then, which was a good sign, and when I offered her some soaked beet pulp shreds she readily ate them from the spoon, something she would not normally do, as she prefers to keep her distance from humans.  I felt the beet pulp shreds being soft, moist and fibrous might help her digestive tract stay active and as an added precaution I gave her some MSE drench that contains probiotics and digestive enzymes.  By the afternoon Queen was acting normal, eating hay and cushing in a more relaxed way.

 

Having owned Queen for a few years now I have my herd records to refer back to and I know that she has had this type of uncomfortable stage in each of the pregnancies she has had here.  Queen is a compact alpaca and by now her unborn cria will be going through some major growth spurts.  It almost seems as if in the last week her pregnancy “bump” has doubled in size.  I am sure at times her cria is pressing on her digestive tract and causing some of the discomfort she is feeling.

 

Last year Queen decided to have her cria early, when he was born Atlas was healthy and strong and looked like a full term cria, but he was born 2 –3 weeks prior to his due date.  In fact Queen caught us unawares with Atlas’s birth as we had gone out to another farm for the day to shear alpacas, but fortunately had our alpaca neighbors Bob and Regina Dart check on the herd only to find that Queen had delivered her cria.

 

I am hoping that Queen holds on at least another month before delivering her cria, two months would be even better.   The cria is only in its ninth month of gestation and its survival chances should it be born now would be slim to none.  So Hang on Queen, we know you are uncomfortable but we really need you to carry that cria for a while longer!   (And you can guarantee that from now on Queen will be under very watchful eye!)

 

Rosemary

The Folly Of Mother Nature

A Scared Baby Rabbit

 

Just before our recent snow fall it was starting to look like spring around the farm, fruit trees were blossoming, elm trees were bright green with young leaves, the bluebirds had arrived for their short stay before heading further north and madam skunk had been prowling the property.

 

Then the snow came and everything was plunged back into winter.  That is the nature of the weather in Eastern New Mexico, extreme and changeable.

 

While doing chores in the snow on Friday morning I was made aware of how much nature had been fooled by our warmer days.

 

Putting hay out for the girls is always a bustling time.  They want to be the first to get their head in the hay feeder, or even better get their head in the bucket of hay I am carrying, especially if we are treating them to a little alfalfa as was the case on Friday.

 

As I put hay out in the feeders in the large blue shelter Griffin the llama was standing by my shoulder trying her best to get her head in the hay bucket.  Suddenly from the direction of Griffins feet came a squealing sound.  The sound was vaguely familiar, I didn’t think it was a cria and hoped it was not as we are not due for any births until May.  The squealing continued and eventually I found the source of the noise.  There under Griffins foot was a tiny baby cottontail rabbit. 

 

Fortunately Griffin did not have her feet completely on the rabbit, she’s a large girl and that would have been the end of the rabbit I am sure.  I nudged Griffin to move and the little rabbit dashed off to the side of the shelter.  It was then I noticed a ball of downy fur nestled in the straw where the mother rabbit had made a nest out of her own fur.

 

The dashing of baby rabbit number one had alerted baby rabbit number two who then ran out of the nest to the side of the shelter.  There was no sign of the mother rabbit, but there was enough activity to get the attention of the llamas and the alpacas.  They watched with curiosity as the little rabbits ran around the shelter dashing from one side to the one.  Then, once the rabbits had stopped, Inca (another of our llamas) and Griffin decided that they should check out what these little furry speeding balls of fur were.  Very gently Inca and Griffin reached out their necks and sniffed the rabbits.  Can you imagine what must have been going through those rabbits minds as the large llama muzzles came down towards them?

 

After a couple of sniffs and some words of reassurance from me that the rabbits were okay Inca and Griffin returned to eating hay.  Two of the alpaca girls Keeva and Ma Cushla though felt they needed to be in on the action and so also went over to sniff the baby rabbits, who by now must have been petrified.

 

As the rabbits seemed okay, apart from being scared, I decided that the best thing to do was to leave them alone to settle back down and return to their nest in the hope that the mother rabbit would return to care for them.  I moved the girls hay feeder away from the nest to make sure that no one stepped on the rabbits again and left the shelter.

 

We have seen the baby rabbits since Friday; Ric caught a glimpse of them on Saturday morning.  They seem to be faring well and I am pretty certain the mother rabbit is tending to them when we are not around.

 

I am glad that the little rabbits and their mother were not scared out of the shelter.  It provides great shelter for them and has some nice deep straw in it where they can stay hidden and warm, provided that is that the girls do not step on them again.  It is early though for such small rabbits and goes to show how Mother Nature sometimes fools herself.

 

Rosemary