Summer is here...

Summer is here and it's been very busy lately. We picked up Misty and her companion, Callista, from the Vet School last Friday. Callista had some work done on an abscess gone awry and we have been flushing it out twice a day with luke warm water. It will take some time to heal but she is cooperating very well with her daily treatments.

I'm posting the above photo of our crias Lucas on the left and Franny. They are best buddies and enjoy spending time together in the sun and chasing each other around in the pasture!

Sad news...

Well, I was hoping that during 4th of July weekend I could have updated the blog with pictures of Rick cutting and baling hay. We did get the baling finished but we had an unfortunate situation over the weekend with one of our girls.

You'll recall me mentioning that Misty looked like she was due any day. I'm sad to report that Misty had a miscarriage on Monday morning while in the care of the wonderful doctors and students at the UW-Madison School of Veterinary Medicine.

Misty had been acting strangely all week and had been lactating for about two weeks. On Friday, I noticed that she wasn't eating but she was drinking a lot of water. We put her in her own stall so that we could monitor her more closely. On Saturday morning, Rick noticed she didn't have any beans (aka alpaca poop) in her stall. We gave her some Karo syrup in the morning and again around 5 p.m. Rick had also given her some plain yogurt twice during the middle of the day. This regimen was to help her digestion and remedy her constipation or blockage.

We saw a few beans on Sunday but she was straining a lot over the poop piles. We let her outside with the rest of the girls so she'd be more comfortable. Since there wasn't much improvement in her condition, we decided to take her to Madison for observation. We don't have a local vet who is able to come out to the farm to thoroughly diagnose any serious problems so Madison was our only choice. It's a 4-hour drive but well worth the peace of mind!

Misty underwent a thorough pelvic examination followed by ultrasound. The doctor was unable to really see the cria inside with the ultrasound. Bloodwork showed an infection of some sort. We left her overnight and the doctor informed me the next morning that poor Misty had aborted the pregnancy early Monday morning. Apparently, the cria had been dead for at least a day or two and wasn't full term as we thought. They have been unable to find any specific reason for this so far.

Our girl has been on antibiotics this week and is doing well - eating, drinking and "making beans". We'll be picking her up on Friday.

We are so thankful that she is okay and we appreciate all the wonderful care from the UW-Madison Vet School.

We've finished shearing!

Today, we completed all of our shearing. We finished up this weekend with our four "llama ladies". Two of them are older and easy to shear and the other two are younger and wild when those clippers come near them. Luckily this year things seemed to work out well.

Check out this picture on Saturday showing Gwendolyn with her shorn body and full growth on her neck. This is actually the best we've done with her as we usually do a barrel cut - just shearing around her middle. This year we were able to shear her back end as well, but fell short of shearing her neck. Behind her in the photo is Sylvia prior to being shorn.

We were prepared to take a beating from Sylvia while we sheared her. However, I think she was ready to have all of that heavy fiber shorn so she actually remained pretty still for most of her shearing today. We were very happy that she even allowed us to shear her neck. Maybe she's actually maturing... Here's a photo of the final outcome.

Over the last month or so, we have shorn a total of 13 alpacas and 7 llamas. We took it step by step and sheared from 2 to 5 animals per weekend. Some people may do their animals all at once, but it's easier on our backs to spread it out over several weekends. Plus we can try to get other weekend projects done too. It was a great sense of accomplishment to have the shearing completed before the end of June.

Now we can concentrate on making hay... hopefully the weather will stay sunny and dry for a few days to allow cutting, drying and baling this week.

Yes, you can sell alpaca fiber!

We just did! I know...a lot of people sell it all the time but this is new to us. It's funny because we've been so busy for the past few years with our day to day chores, jobs, etc that I never took the time to even try to sell fiber. I knew we needed to do it, but that was one more thing on the list. Now that we sold some I've got so many ideas for selling more!

The tough part is skirting the fiber to take out all the short "second cuts" and all the pieces of hay, etc. These are farm animals that like to roll around in the grass and dirt. Before we shear them, we try to get as much vegetable matter out of the fiber as we can but we can't get it all out. The only way to do it is to find a comfortable spot to lay it all out and start picking through it. Over the last several weeks we've worked on skirting some fiber for a friend to buy. Rene' and her kids, Rick and I all worked off and on to get it done. It was definitely a team effort! Thank you Kathy W. (and Abbie) for your purchase!

Well, we are finished shearing all of our alpacas for the season and now have only four female llamas to shear this weekend. I think last year we were still shearing in July so we're way ahead of schedule!

I mentioned last week that we are expecting a cria any day now...well it could be any day or any week now. I'm not going to try to predict it and Misty isn't going to tell us until she's good and ready.

Surprise - It's a boy!

Well, we didn't expect Sofie's cria to come along for another couple of weeks, but our due date must have been off a bit. Sofie was humming and acting suspicious this morning and between around 10 and 11 a.m. this 17 pound boy came bouncing out!

Here's a picture of the happy mom Sofie (aka She's So Fawn) and her new baby boy.

According to our mom, before noon this guy was already running around the pasture like he was born a couple of days ago. This healthy and handsome guy is the son of Bruxo's Peruvian Luxor, the 2006 AOBA National Champion White Suri Male. Special thanks to Daley's Pleasant Hill Farm for another outstanding herdsire!

I rechecked our two other pregnant girls and one looks like she's building up her milk supply...I won't be surprised if we have another cria within the next day or two!

Weekend wrap-up

Whew...the weekend flew by really fast and I meant to get the new cria picture up on Friday. Here she is on Friday in top form. I like this picture because it shows the little brown tip at the end of her tail. What a cutie! We have tentatively named her "Franny" after our grandma, Frances.

More shearing this weekend...we finished up four more girls, including Franny's mom Mira. They are so happy to get all that long, thick fiber off to enjoy the cool air.

It's a girl!

Misty's Morning Miracle (aka Mira) and JJA Royal Adonis are pleased to announce the arrival of their new cria. Here is the first official photo of mom and baby soon after the birth. (Mom needs a haircut.)

The new baby girl weighed in at 14 pounds, 10 oz and is nursing well from mom. She's beautiful! Thank you to Joyful Journey Alpacas for their outstanding herdsire.

I'll post more pictures later, but I just wanted to get at least one on the site tonight.