Have you ever had a teacher tell you that you were unprepared?

I was the definition of unprepared the morning of a very important farm visit recently. In fact, I didn’t even know he was coming until about 15 minutes until I was supposed to leave to go and pick him up at the airport, thanks to my down email and his busy schedule.

Oh, I had been planning for weeks, months to meet my friend from the UK. We had been working on getting things looking nice on the farm the week before…but when I didn’t hear from him…and the kids kept telling me about holiday parties at school, basketball practices, piano recitals, etc. – I have to admit I thought he had cancelled his trip and forgot to tell me. It just went to the back of my mind.

Then email worked & I was surprised to hear from him. I was rushing around like a madwoman trying to get dressed in a tiny amount of time on an oddly frigid morning with our pipes frozen – unheard of in L.A. (lower Alabama).

As I drove to the airport, I fretted about being seen as unprofessional because the only paper left at my house was light blue. (My little artists go through reams of white paper like babies go through formula.) Could I really print sales info on that?

Luckily he didn’t mind stopping at Staples on the way back to the farm, and was a prince about the whole thing. I needn’t have worried. It was a laid back day, and Carman made it all worthwhile by presenting us with a Magnum cria (above).

Alpacas gathered around the new cria just after she was born just outside my office door.

The man came a long way to see Magnum and his kids. All the previously put together packets in the world are not as showy as what Carman did by dropping one on the ground for him to see!

Magnum himself did a great job too. Magnum is a very impressive animal because he is extremely intelligent. Upon seeing him, our visitor commented, “It’s not like seeing an alpaca, it’s more like looking at a human.” It is true. When you look at Magnum and talk with him, you feel more like he knows what you are saying to him. He is incredibly bright.

This little girl was tiny when she was born, only 9 lbs. This may be why her ears were inside out and curling up. They will get better if we curl them the right way with our fingers each time we catch her for a treatment or to dip her naval or weigh her, etc. If they do not, we will tape them for a short while and that should fix them right up.

Mitzi with her dam Carman, a Camilio daughter.

Thanks Carman for saving the day! While our visitor was enjoying the cria I was able to run to the house and gather some materials for him.

You gotta love it when your animals pitch in and help you out! After the year I’ve had, that really spoke to me on a basic level. That the alpacas and I are a team. We have been through a TOUGH year together and we are still here.

We are still working together, still producing cria, still producing fiber, and still a team. I can see it in their eyes every day when I go out there. And I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

I love alpacas. I’m so lucky to love what I do every day.

Thanks again Carman.

I love that little Mitzi. Don’t you guys?

December 19th, 2010 | Tags: alpaca, Alpacas, Carman, cria, cria coat, Magnum, Mitzi, New Additions | Category: Alpacas, Husbandry, New Additions | Comments (12)

Nie Nie fell asleep on my arm after a long trip to the emergency clinic in Mobile. Took 8 tries with my phone, with my other hand (pulled over mind you) to get this picture. Yes, she insisted in sitting in my lap while I drove.

Happy Thanksgiving! & Happy Wordless Wednesday.

Note: This was early on in Nie Nie’s medical history. She’s doing well now, running around like she owns the place. Something I am definitely thankful for this Thanksgiving.

Read more about our premature cria Nie Nie.

November 24th, 2010 | Tags: Nie Nie, Wordless Wednesdays | Category: Alpacas, New Additions, The Daily Stuff, Wordless Wednesdays | Comments (4)

Here she is. All 8 pounds of her. No, It’s not a necklace that she’s wearing, but a catheter, via Auburn’s Large Animal Veterinary Hospital where she spent a short time. But she’s home now and doing great.

Her mom didn’t know what to make of her at first, but now they are inseparable.

I bought her mom, Niida, because I thought she was the prettiest thing ever. And that she and Magnum would make a perfect match. So far it’s a good combo.

Alpacas are very social, and the girls wanted to meet the new addition to the herd. NieNie is the only cria we have on the farm right now so she is the star!

Nie Nie’s floppy ears are a sign of her prematurity. She was about two weeks early. That will either go away on its own by straightening up, or we should be able to fix it be taping them later if the problem persists. (In Nie Nie’s case it is already correcting itself.)

The bond between dam and cria is one of my favorite parts of raising alpacas. It is so tender, so gentle and loving that it sometimes takes my breath away.

Way too young to be getting significant nutrition from grass, tiny NieNie imitates her dam’s grazing behavior at just a few days old because “I want to be just like Mom!” Precious.

If you like this post you might also like:

Tiny Alpaca Phoenix Rises

Meet New Alpaca Cria Sista

Meet George & Martha the Alpacas

November 18th, 2010 | Tags: alpaca, Alpacas, dam, Fairhope Alpacas, Magnum, NieNie, Niida, premature cria, prematurity, premie, SCA Peruvian Magnum | Category: Alpacas, New Additions | Comments (11)

This little beauty was recently born to Sonyadore and our 5x Champion herdsire SCA Peruvian Shawnee. Congratulations to our friends and clients the Lees on the birth of this lovely little girl. Thanks to Cindy Labbie for sharing the photo.

November 5th, 2010 | Tags: cria, herdsire, new addition, SCA Peruvian Shawnee, Shawnee, Sonyadore | Category: Alpacas, Good Breeding, New Additions | Comments (1)

Alpaca Cria Races

Thanks to Carol Karsten of Hidden Hill Farm Alpacas for contributing this photo of her cria racing around the barnyard.

Participating in Wordless Wednesday.

October 27th, 2010 | Tags: alpaca, Alpacas, Carol Karsten, cria, cria races, Hidden Hill Farm Alpacas, Wordless Wednesdays | Category: Alpacas, New Additions, Wordless Wednesdays | Comments (7)

Check me out!

Here she is! The little girl who brought up so many good genetic questions the other day on Twitter. The Murphy’s Law baby. The one I just knew was going to turn out this way.

You see, in the alpaca business, a blue-eyed white is not really the desired outcome. This white with blue eyes is linked with deafness. (We don’t know yet if little Roulette is deaf.) It occurs about 25% of the time when you breed two animals who both have the white spotting gene. It is complicated and you can read more about it here.

Normally I would NOT breed a black female with a white face like Blakeny, Roulette’s mom, to a male with the white spotting gene like the tuxedo grey male who is her dad. But in this case, I had one breeding to this spectacular male and I needed to use it right then and she was the only female who was open and who even remotely would work. The odds were in my favor for a beautiful black or grey cria – a 75% chance. So I played the Roulette wheel.

The general consensus (or common myths) amongst alpaca breeders is that the female blue-eyed whites are very friendly and that they have amazing fiber. We can usually breed them to black males with no spots and get awesome colored cria who are not deaf.  So welcome to the fold my little Roulette, and thanks so much to Roni and Brad at Providence Alpaca Farm for taking such good care of my little sweetie.

What can I say? I like to gamble?

October 18th, 2010 | Tags: alpaca, Blakeny, blue-eyed white, blue-eyed white alpaca, cria, deafness, gamble, Murphy's Law, new baby, Providence Alpaca Farm, Roulette, Twitter, white spotting gene | Category: Alpacas, New Additions | Comments (11)

Sista Quita

The other evening I was walking out to move the alpacas out into their pastures, (these days it is too hot for the alpacas to be in the fields during the day so we pasture them at night) and I noticed Poquita was breathing very hard. I moved another group of animals and kept an eye on her because I thought she might be in labor.

As it came time to move her group, she went to the poop pile and pushed. She cried and something was trying to come out. “Oh my,” I said. “You are trying to have a baby! Let’s you and me stay up here at the barn while your friends go out into the fields. And we will have a baby.” I was on the phone with a friend while all of this was going on, talking on my headset. She got a big kick out of the whole thing.

I was concerned when I returned from taking out all of the other alpacas in Poquita’s group to the field because all I was seeing was a huge red bulbous thing coming out of Poquita. Also, she is older and she was tired. I feared that she had been in labor for hours and that she didn’t have much energy left to deliver the cria. I remembered having to help pull her cria from last year, Rachel Alexandra because she had been rather large. This time she was a week early and I was concerned about placenta previa where the placenta separates. This is a dangerous condition that often results in the loss of the cria.

Nervously, I popped the sack. (Do not try this at home. I’m not sure if I was supposed to do this…cuz I’m not a vet..But I’m not sure what ELSE I would have done…) And I found baby – Yay! Snorting and gasping…there were feet and a head in there obviously trying hard to get out. Mom must not have had the energy to push them out so I knew I had to pull and quickly. I did. I tried to get Poquita to get up and give me some gravity. Nothing doing.

She seemed to think that I was here to save the day and that she was finished. Like she was saying , “Finally someone else is here to get this baby out!”

Ladies, can anyone relate here?… I just had a flashback to some of my own deliveries. OK, maybe it’s just me…

The baby was easy to pull out. Thank goodness! Out within minutes. Then the dear little thing was scooching around trying to get up. It pooped within minutes! I couldn’t believe that. If it had been as big as last year’s horse-sized cria, Rachel Alexandra (almost 23 lbs.) I’d have needed the jaws of life to get that baby out, but this one was only 16 lbs. a good size but easy for Poquita to deliver. Whew!

I felt like a nitwit.

I first looked and determined that this cria was a boy. For the first few hours I was calling it a boy. Then I saw her going to the bathroom and I realized I had either made a mistake or there was something really wrong here. Uh, yeah, I had made a mistake. A rush to judgment. This cria was a GIRL! You would think after 11 years I could tell the difference…but I guess sometimes, in all the excitement, with all the children, and the phone calls, and the chaos, I totally GOOF!

In the above picture Poquita is helping her cria learn to nurse. She is making a clucking noise at the cria. This is a noise to communicate with her and tell her where to come to nurse. She also nudges the cria to the right spot.

Last week my Daddy took me to LuLu’s for lunch. For those of you not familiar with this wonderful restaurant, it is a Gulf Coast tradition, owned and operated by Jimmy Buffet’s sister (they call her Sista). It’s on an intercoastal waterway in Gulf Shores, AL. It has a beach and a fun atmosphere. Just having a margarita and some fried green tomatoes for lunch and dipping my toes in the sand make me feel like I’m on vacation even when I’m not.

I think I’ll name this little cria Sista Quita. It kinda goes with her sister’s name, Princess Quita too. Luv it.

Thank you, sweet readers, for letting me share my new baby with you!

May 24th, 2010 | Tags: alpaca, alpaca cria, alpaca in labor, Alpacas, LuLu's, new cria, pastures, Poquita, Sista, Sista Quita | Category: Alpacas, New Additions | Comments (16)

Each cria season I have some favorites. Occasionally I fall hard for one. Like George here, who was born on President’s Day. He makes me weak in the knees.

Happy Wordless Wednesday.

March 31st, 2010 | Tags: alpaca, alpaca cria, cria, cria season, George, President's Day, Wordless Wednesdays | Category: Alpacas, New Additions, The Daily Stuff, Wordless Wednesdays | Comments (19)

George

President’s Day was busy at our house. Our twins were in a Mardi Gras parade so we were off the farm most of the day. We came back to find an unexpected cria. None of our dams were due for a few more days so we weren’t really looking for any new cria…

Yet here was one. He was so cute. All wet and shiny out in the sunny, chilly day. I ran to the barn to get some towels to dry him off. He looked to be a beige male, full brother to last year’s Clark. As I sat at my desk in my office writing down the new cria’s vital statistics on his new chart, the Artist opened the door and said, “Well, I guess since it’s President’s Day we could name them Abraham Lincoln and George Washington or something.”

Everyone at my house is always trying to name the cria. I had already chosen a name for this little beige cria, and I was about to write that name on the chart. So I was trying to think of  a diplomatic way to tell him that: 1. I already named this cria, and 2. there would only be one cria today, because there were no other alpacas due. (I am such a know it all)

My head was still bent over the desk as I heard him in the doorway clear his throat again and say, “Well, we are going to have TWO placentas…”

At this point a question bubble must have appeared above my head and I finally looked up from my paperwork. I turned and saw him standing in the doorway holding another cria! This one was completely dry, older somehow, yet newborn.

“Bella’s baby!” I shrieked, knowing immediately who the dam was. This cria looked exactly like another of Bella’s cria, Blakeny, and Bella was the next alpaca due.

“Is it a girl?” I asked.

“I have no idea.” he answered.

I lifted up the tail as he was holding her, and screamed with joy, “It’s a girl!” No Abraham Lincoln here. Trying to think of a woman President, my mind thought, “Hilary, wait no, she never got elected…”

Martha

So we chose…George and Martha as their names to honor our first President and his wife.

I am a big fan of George Washington. I love that he was a farmer and love reading about him and his life. I admire him and what he stood for. George is the perfect name for this little alpaca who is turning into quite a force. Martha suits the little girl quite well too.

We were so blessed with these wonderful cria on President’s Day.

Apparently Martha arrived early in the day, dried herself off, made herself at home, and needed no human intervention at all even though it was a chilly February day – Rock On GIRL!

Martha and George

And George is a star himself. An awesome boy with fleece that is out of this world. He has a cool beard of fiber and he is personality plus. I feel bad that I was disappointed for a minute that he was a boy because now he is really bringing it. George has definitely won my heart!

I call George and Martha my “day twins” because even though they aren’t related at all, they were born on the same day and lived in the same pen for many days. They are in tune with each other like twins are, and have a special bond.

Do you know animals who have a special bond or who were born close to each other? Leave a comment and tell us about them.

March 7th, 2010 | Tags: Alpacas, George, Martha, New Additions, twins | Category: Alpacas, New Additions | Comments (17)