It’s hard to believe that three weeks have already gone by since the TxOLAN Alpaca Spectacular. The show string have been in quarantine since their return home and thankfully have not shown any signs of illness. Having spent their three weeks in quarantine it is now time for the show string to return to their respective pastures.
Atlas, Pride and Mags will rejoin Zin and the junior males, while Dream, Zianna and Kaneka will rejoin the female herd.
We didn’t put the fleece covers back on the show string on their immediate return from the show. Call us soft if you wish, but we felt after doing so well for us at the show it would be a nice treat to allow the show alpacas to have a little time without their covers on, of course the first thing they did when they got home was to have a good roll, but that’s okay the dirt will drop out before their next show.
This last Thursday we were forecast for dangerously high winds. It makes me take notice when the local meteorologists forecast “dangerously high winds”, bearing in mind that their idea of “breezy” is 25 –35 mph winds, it makes you wonder what wind speed would deserve the title “dangerous”. We decided, in view of the forecast, we should put the fleece covers back on the show alpacas before the entire tumbleweed crop of western New Mexico landed in our pastures and in our alpaca’s fleeces!
The winds on Thursday didn’t quite live up to the forecast with wind gusts in the 50 mph range; strong enough we were glad we had put the fleece covers back on the alpacas. The wind was also strong enough that poor Little Man had a real struggle to get across the pasture, but he’s a tough little guy and he made it.
Prior to putting the fleece covers on we cleaned the alpacas fleeces of the worst of the vegetable matter and took photos of the show string without their covers on. The alpacas were not too cooperative about having their pictures taken, but we got one or two shots that we can use. We also checked toenails and teeth and treated ears as a preventative measure against ear ticks. Then it was back to the herd for the show string who wasted no time at all in getting reacquainted with the rest of the herd.