Preparing for the show

We've only got a week left for final preparations for next weekend's alpaca show. Since I did a poor job of blogging in March and April, I'll fill you in on the details of what we've been doing to prepare.

Recently, we had our vet take blood samples from our alpacas who will be attending the show. One of the show requirements includes testing your alpacas for the presence of an active BVDV (Bovine Viral Diarrhea Virus) infection. This is to prevent any Persistently Infected (PI) alpacas from entering the show facility. It's a good idea to have your animals tested whether you are attending a show or not. Thankfully, to date, our entire herd has all tested negative for BVDV so we are good to go.

We also had to have our vet examine our four alpacas and complete a Certificate of Veterinary Inspection within 30 days of the show. In addition, we have to pay close attention to them during this week to make sure they are still healthy. We'd never want to bring a sick animal to a show and we wouldn't want anyone else to expose a sick animal to ours. A veterinarian will be at the show during check-in to make sure all animals entering the show are healthy. Any sick alpacas won't be allowed in.

This past week, we ordered new stall mats for our show stalls and a couple of new halters so we're patiently awaiting our shipment to arrive.

The show also requires that we worm our animals seven days prior to the show so this weekend we wormed them with Ivermectin and Safeguard.

In addition, we double-checked everyone's microchip with our chip scanner. We had chipped Nuno over a year ago when he was just a cria and had noticed late last year his microchip didn't show up when we scanned him. We thoroughly scanned him today from head to toe and we still couldn't locate the chip. It may have fallen out sometime after inserting last year if we didn't push the needle in far enough. Today we inserted a new chip and I'm confident it will stay put.

During this week, we'll be fine tuning our halter training with the crias. We took Leroy and Lucas for a long walk on Saturday and I was amazed at the major improvement with Lucas. I have to do more work with Frances this week, but I know she'll be fine.

There's still more to do to prepare so I'll keep you posted during the week as our countdown to showtime continues...