And baby makes 5!

I was casually working across the road when my parents happened by and asked if ..."we had a baby?" I was shocked only to cross the street and see as they saw...a young cria under a new mom! It was Joy standing in the pasture with a cria suckling under her. It was her cria...a little over a week early and the spitting image of her! It was a male that was criated out of our very own Marcus. It was thier first pairing and her first male cria after two females. This new young male will make a beautiful herdisre for the farm someday (we don't have any brown herdsires!). Although each cria born to the farm makes you think about another alpaca for the farm. But as my husband says...everything is for sale...and we are geting up there in numbers...and continue to sell a few here and there! We now stand at 30 alpacas on the farm. Three left to go this season...2 alpacas and 1 llama. One alpaca is due this week. We have been fortunate that most of the cria this season have arrived unannounced and healthy. This is far less stressfull than past birthing seasons where we spent the summer on "cria watch"...there is no way to desribe the agony of it! For today we are thankful and with each birth we fall in love with alpacas again!

Got Water???

Yes, it is that time of year. Any alpaca farmer knows that it is a big day om the farm when the pools come out! Well Joy could not wait...she literally followed me down the pasture when my son Tyler and I began putting out pools. She could not wait and quickly jockeyed into position in the pool...then proceeded to defend her spot in the pool. She is a "pool lover" there are also alpacas who have absolutley no interest in the "alpaca pool"...but prefer to be sprayed! The pools are wonderful but need maintenance...dumping, cleaning and monitoring when there are cria about! We don't tend to put them in a pasture when there are cria in it...but move the mom and cria to a different pasture and back once the cria is able to be near a pool and the herd. Even though it only contains a few inches...one never takes chances with new cria. ;-) PS: the next day she had a beautiful male cria!