Showing posts with label Frances Bean. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Frances Bean. Show all posts

Monday, October 19, 2009

What's in a name?

We recently named our newest cria, born nearly a month ago. I wanted to call him "Monster" because he's been gaining weight and growing like crazy, but I was voted down. About a week or so ago, we officially began calling him "Matthias" (pronounced muh-tee'-us). Here is the big guy above in the cria coat, hanging out with the ladies on this sunny morning in October.

Any fans of 1980's-era rock music may sense a theme with the names of some of our boys. Matthias and Nuno are both names of guitarists that we admired "back in the day." I'm not sure if we will be keeping with this theme for future alpacas born at Hidden Pond Farm. We just sort of chose these names because we like them, not to intentionally name them after musicians.

Actually, Francis Bean is also a name I borrowed from the rock music world for our huacaya female born last year. (The real Francis Bean is the daughter of the late Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain and musician/actress Courtney Love.) I liked the name because my grandmother's name was Francis and I thought "Bean" was cute because we alpaca farmers always refer to a natural alpaca byproduct as "alpaca beans." And since I'm on the subject... our suri male HPF Iggy was actually named after our grandfather Ignatius and not after musician Iggy Pop.

There really is no rhyme or reason as to what we name each alpaca born at our farm. I tried to be creative in the beginning, but now we all kind of brainstorm and try to find a name that everyone likes. If it takes three weeks or more to choose the name we all feel is right for that cria, then so be it. Each and every one of our alpacas is unique and their personalities are very different. We try to select a name that each one of them will be happy living with for the rest of their lives. They all seem to be very happy so far, so I guess we're doing alright.

Have a great day everyone!

Monday, May 18, 2009

I see spots!

Here's a before and after shearing photo of Frances Bean - what a cutie! She turns a year old next month and this was her very first time being shorn.

I love shearing an alpaca the first time to see how the color has changed and darkened "below the surface" of what you usually see. Franny's dark brown fiber looked like chocolate and then to see her spots - wow! I'm showing a close up of her rear end in the photo below because we found appaloosa spots under all that white fiber. She also has a lot of spots on her neck as well.


Rick has taken the week off and Rene' will also take a couple days this week to get more shearing done - maybe even finish everyone, we'll see. Today though we are taking a day off from shearing. Tomorrow we'll start back up again and we'll have some very grateful alpacas who will enjoy the sunny weather even more with their new haircuts - Wednesday is supposed to get up to 80 degrees!

Have a great day!