It's cold!

I've added a new gadget to the blog. I wanted to add just a simple gadget that would tell you the temperature here in Marinette, but then I saw the Doppler Radar gadget and thought that would be really cool. Well, I've got a dial-up connection so all I see is a blur. I may change it in another day or two if it doesn't work.

It was warm on Sunday, in the 30's and raining all afternoon. Then it got really windy during the evening and temperatures were in the single digits and negatives during the night so it all froze. Windchills are in the negatives...I admit I haven't listened very closely to the weather because I don't want to know the windchill! I saw earlier tonight the temperature was a nippy 5 degrees F. I hear the wind howling outside my window every now and then and I'll bet it's even colder than 5 degrees now. Burr!

Everybody in the barn got extra straw to lay on because otherwise the concrete is way too cold. The boys in the shelters outside have a lot of hay - that they waste - to lay on so they will be fine. Of course they've also got all that warm fiber to keep them warm too. Their shelters actually stay pretty cozy and keep them protected from the wind. They all seem to be handling this weather fine but we keep an eye on them to make sure they are comfortable and have water to drink and hay to nibble on during the day.

Great news...Misty has been confirmed pregnant. Now we just have to figure out when to make the trip to pick her up. Hopefully we'll have good weather and no snow on the day we make the drive.

Only 8 more days until winter officially starts!

So why do we have all this snow already?! Plus it's been really cold this past week. We kept the girls indoors and the barn doors were closed this week to keep everyone warm. This morning I let the girls out and they took off out into the field. You can see Sofie here running around in the snow. After I put the camera away they all came running back towards me and the barn - it would have been a cute shot. I think they purposely wait until they see the camera go back in my pocket!

We'll most likely close everyone up again tonight and if not tonight, then tomorrow sometime. It's supposed to get warm tomorrow - in the 30's but we could get some rain and snow. Then it's back to temperatures in the 'teens' for the rest of the week. Ah, yes, Wisconsin in the winter...

Registering the crias

I registered the crias online tonight with the alpaca registry. It's really easy to do although the registration isn't complete until all of the labwork is received and the crias parents are confirmed. Basically all of the "paperwork" and payment is done online so it's nice to get that taken care of quickly.

The Alpaca Registry, Inc. (ARI) requires DNA testing for all registrations. This is done by obtaining a blood sample from each alpaca you are registering and putting it on a card. You can see on the top left corner of this photo the big red blood spot in the middle of the circle.

We're getting better at this every year. I don't like having to do this to our poor little crias but it only takes a few minutes. We use a syringe to prick a spot on the ear to get our blood sample, then we suck up a little in the syringe and carefully squirt it onto the dna card. (I face the "open end" of the needle down toward the paper so it doesn't splash outside the circle.)

Although I'm sure it's uncomfortable to the crias, they really don't act like it was a big deal after we've finished. We make sure to put some pressure on the ear where we took the sample if it bleeds a lot. It stops bleeding rather quickly after that. Other farms may use a different technique or draw blood from the tail or different location. We've gotten comfortable with this method.

You'll also notice above the ARI natural fiber color chart. I clipped a small lock of hair off each alpaca and we matched up their fiber color with the color chart. You can order these directly from the ARI website for about $20 - it really is an important item to have because some of the colors are so close you really can't judge it for yourself that easily.

As a matter of fact, Leroy's fiber was a little tricky because we wavered a little between medium fawn and dark fawn. Depending on how the light hit it, the fiber "kind of" matched both colors. In the end, we decided on the dark fawn.

Now I just have to mail in our dna cards to ARI for processing and wait...