The scenery was certainly gorgeous on our road trip, and we were able to continuously avoid bad weather on our trip. We drove almost 4,000 miles to Montana to pick up 34 of our alpacas and bring them back to L.A. (lower Alabama). We purchased the Windy Ridge alpaca herd last year. It took awhile for my professional transporter husband to return from Iraq and for us to arrange the time (and gas money with diesel at $4/gallon!) to make it out there to get them.

I have to admit that when Jim (above) told me that we would be driving 14 hour + days, I was a bit skeptical as to how much fun this trip was really going to be. “I love him, but do I love anyone so much that over fourteen hours a day in a truck is FUN? I mean, won’t we get sick of the whole thing rather quickly?” I wondered to myself.

To my great delight we actually had a marvelous time! We have so much fun just hanging out together. It was nice to have some alone time sans children, though we did bring our dog, Sebastian.

I may have had a little more fun on the trip than Jim because he caught a cold, but it was way better than we had even hoped. Jim and I visited, and I read and played games and movies on my Kindle Fire. It’s hard to believe that I never got bored. Stiff and chunkier from road food, yes. But not bored.

The worst part was when we forgot to get off I-10, and we wound up in downtown New Orleans’ Mardi Gras traffic the Sunday before Fat Tuesday. Other than that unplanned detour we had smooth sailing the rest of the time.

The alpacas fit snugly in our big trailer, and Southbound they went. In the coming days I will be posting some more pictures of them and listing some of them for sale. They are really beautiful animals and we are so happy to finally have them all home.

What are your favorite ways to pass the time on a road trip? Leave a comment and let us know how you keep from getting bored on the road.

March 3rd, 2012 | Tags: alpaca, Alpacas, Kindle Fire, Montana, professional transporter, Road Trip, Sebastian, transporting alpacas, Windy Ridge | Category: Alpacas, Farm Business, The Alpaca Lifestyle | Comments (1)

At Fairhope Alpacas we will be shearing our alpaca herd on March 17th this year. When our shearer, Mark Loffhagen, proposed the date, I mentioned to him that  it would be St. Patrick’s Day.

“We’ll just have to have green beer then,” was his response.

No, we don’t drink during the shearing, but we usually have a beer after the long day is over.  Anyone know if I can get the green food coloring at the grocery store or if I have to go somewhere special? I saw an incredible aqua colored cake the other day that I wanted to make, but was stumped on how to make that color icing.

Back to shearing. It’s hard to believe that it is only two weeks away. We welcome volunteers who would like to help us that day. I even pay my fiber lovers with fleece for their assistance.

More on Alpaca Shearing:

Alpaca Shearing Day 2009

We Sheared 97 Alpacas on Saturday

On-line Alpaca Shearing Tutorial

If you’d like to help just contact me via email, Twitter, FB, or by phone. My contact information is on our farm page.

March 2nd, 2012 | Tags: alpaca, Alpacas, Fairhope Alpacas, farm, fiber lovers, Mark Loffhagen, On-line Alpaca Shearing Tutorial, shearing, Shearing Alpacas, St. Patrick's Day | Category: Alpacas, Handling/Training, The Alpaca Lifestyle | Leave a comment

Here are some of the cria born on our alpaca farm in Alabama near the end of 2011. In the center is the fawn little Casey McCoy. Full sister to one of our favorite alpacas we have ever produced, Colt McCoy, we are thrilled to welcome her to the herd. Casey is a solid girl with a turbo dense fleece! She has the bloodlines for it. Her grandfather sheared over 16 lbs. Casey is out of Nevoso and SCA Peruvian Magnum.

Moquita. Out of Princess Quita and sired by SCA Peruvian Magnum. I love her gorgeous white fleece. It consists of individual fingers of fine fiber with a soft handle and very uniform. A fiber artists’s dream.

Magnum’s Black Pearl. Out of Blakeny and sired by SCA Peruvian Magnum. Yes, he throws TRUE BLACK. And this girl’s fiber looks like a Magnum cria fleece with lovely crimp and structure. It is super soft and DENSE! This girl is about two months old, but we are impressed already.

Precious little Grace sold herself to the Donalds already. She is out of Amber and SCA Peruvian Magnum.  Grace has one of the brightest fleeces! It’s also incredibly soft, but it’s the luster that will have fiber people going nuts for it.

Suzie Q is Jim’s baby. I mean Foxy Lady’s. with Magnum. Jim only bottle fed her for a while and fell head over heels in love with her.

Who can really blame him? She has one of the top fleeces we’ve produced, and just look at those eyelashes! She’s a little doll. tiny. I think she’s putting all her energy into growing her fleece rather than her body. That happens sometimes with cria who grow extra-long staple lengths. After shearing she should have a growth spurt.

We call her Candy Cane, (one of my twins named her) but she probably needs a more regal name. This is the first Archangel/SCA Peruvian Magnum cross, and we like what we see. Out of our Archangel daughter, Guardian Angel and sired by Magnum. She is exhibiting a very advanced fleece that is ultra fine. I’m looking forward to seeing her histogram.

Perhaps because he’s the only baby boy we have, but this little guy is my heart. I’ve been calling him Brown Mesquite because his grandsire is the great Peruvian Black Mesquite, but…he’s not brown. More like fawn.

Whatever his name turns out to be I adore this male out of Tapioka. I think his fleece looks the most like his sire, SCA Peruvian Magnum, who is a winner of the prestigious AFCNA Spirit of Fiber award.  Magnum has already produced one son, Mr. Jefferson, who won the Spirit of Fiber award. Would I be getting ahead of myself to dream that one day this little man could win it too? Okay, yes. But this boy’s fleece is the stuff of alpaca dreams…

Today I’m putting on the “to-do” list photographing all these little ones’ fleeces. Shearing is coming up soon so I’d better get to it.

Which of these cute alpaca cria is your favorite and why? Leave me a comment and let me know what you think.

If you like this post, you might also like:

New Cria Suzy Q’s First Day (video)

How To Imprint Your Cria

Cria Races

March 1st, 2012 | Tags: AFCNA, alpaca, alpaca farm, alpaca farm in Alabama, Alpacas, Amber, Black Pearl, Blakeny, Candy Cane, Casey McCoy, CCNF Archangel, Colt McCoy, cria, farm, Grace, Guardian Angel, Moquita, Mr. Jefferson, Nevoso, Princess Quita, SCA Peruvian Magnum, shearing, Spirit of Fiber Award | Category: Alpacas, New Additions | Comments (4)

Thanks to Joy Smith of Riverstone Peruvian Suri Alpacas for contributing this picture of her alpaca who’s not that interested in being halter trained.

Participating in Wordless Wednesday

February 28th, 2012 | Tags: alpaca, Alpacas, halter training, Joy Smith, Riverstone Peruvian Suri Alpacas, Wordless Wednesdays | Category: Alpacas, Handling/Training, Wordless Wednesdays | Comments (4)

My husband, Jim Cocking, used to be a serious alpaca transporter. That is probably how we got to be such good friends. Jim hauled many an alpaca for me and my alpaca friends.

The life of a transporter is truly an adventure fraught with challenges of all sorts. I could listen to him tell stories about his transporting days for hours on end. (I think I will turn on a tape recorder next time so that I can write them down for you. They are fascinating!)

I ran across a post on the Myths of Transporting on Crystal Springs Alpacas’ website. It talks about a lot of the extra care good alpaca transporters use when hauling our precious paca babies. The author writes a lot about Jim’s transport business and tells a few of Jim’s stories. Read more here.

I know when we go to pick up our 30 new alpacas in Montana, I will be super glad I have Jim at the wheel!

February 28th, 2012 | Tags: alpaca, Alpaca Solutions, alpaca transport, alpaca transporting, Alpacas, Crystal Springs Alpacas, Jim Cocking, Low Stress Alpaca Transport, Montana, Myths of Transporting, transport business | Category: Alpacas, Farm Business, Husbandry, Lifestyle, Moving the farm | Comments (1)

People are always asking me how we choose the names for our new baby alpacas (called cria). Here are the top ten ways we do it.

1. Look at the cria and see if he or she is just “looks” like a certain name or if the situation calls for something special. For example, when “George” and “Martha” presented themselves unexpectedly on President’s Day, that seemed a no-brainer.

2. Let your children choose the name. This can leave you with a herd where most of the alpacas are named “Fluffy”, “Brownie” or “Pickachu”, but you can call their offspring “Fluffachu”, “Pickabrown”, and no one will care. Or you can go the fancier route and go with “Fluffy II” or my favorite “Fluffy 2.o”.

3. No? Give the kids some options and let the public vote. (Check out our “name that alpaca” post for example.)

4. Where do you get these names? Scour baby name books.

5. Keep a list of names that your spouse said “no” to when you were having children. Mine is a mile long.

6. Keep a list with you, perhaps on your phone or computer, and every time you like a name from a book or a movie that you think would work for an alpaca, make a note.

7. Name the alpaca the same initial as his/her dam. For example Adele’s cria would be Abby, or Abel. Callista’s cria would be Calliope, or Checkerboard.

8. Visit the internet for pet naming sites like Cat Names Meow where you can find the purrrfect cat name.

9. Combine the names of your cria’s ancestors. For example, I’m considering “Magnum’s Brown Mesquite” for the little guy in the picture above. His sire is our herdsire, SCA Peruvian Magnum, and his grandsire is Peruvian Black Mesquite.

10. Follow your heart. But use your head too. Will people want to buy an alpaca named “Chaos” or “Paris Hilton”? The fun part is – it’s up to you to name your cria. Have fun with it!

Got any good alpaca naming stories? Any unique names or naming techniques you’d like to share? Let us hear about them!

January 16th, 2012 | Tags: alpaca, baby names, cria, name, naming your alpaca, Paris Hilton, Peruvian Black Mesquite, SCA Peruvian Magnum, sire, top ten | Category: Alpacas, New Additions | Comments (12)

Jim and our new cria

After a long deployment in Iraq, my sweetie, Jim Cocking, is finally home! Actually, he has been home a while. We’ve taken the last month to have a honeymoon. Kinda. As much as you can on a farm with a passel of kids and a herd of alpacas. So not much of one now that I think of it.

But it is wonderful to have Jim back home and not in harm’s way. And we love being able to communicate  face to face instead of by email. We have realized how many of our email convos have been misinterpreted because you can’t read the nonverbal and metacommunication. (Yeah, that’s a big fancy word left over from when I was a psychologist. I like to throw stuff like that around every once in a while so my parents don’t feel like my degree was wasted.)

In the above picture with my dear husband is another new addition we need to welcome – Princess Quita’s little female cria that she had with SCA Peruvian Magnum. This little girl is a beauty! She has a tremendous fleece that is already showing excellent bundling, crimp, and density. She and Princess Quita are for sale in our End of the Year Sale in a package that includes a breeding for each of them for $7,000 for those alpaca fans out there. Email me for more info.

November 2nd, 2011 | Tags: alpaca package, Alpacas, deployment, End of the Year Sale, fleece, honeymoon, husband, Iraq, Jim Cocking, Magnum, metacommunication, new cria, Princess Quita, SCA Peruvian Magnum, welcome home | Category: Alpacas, Lifestyle, New Additions | Comments (4)

The other day I went out into the field, and what did I find? A new baby!

Amber had her little cria. It’s a girl, and she’s doing well, bopping around. Playing with the other little girl we had last week. Our next cria are due today so we are on baby watch again for four of our alpaca mommas. Should be a Fun Fall!

October 12th, 2011 | Tags: alpaca, Alpacas, Amber, baby alpaca, cria, Fairhope Alpacas, New Additions, new baby | Category: Alpacas, New Additions | Comments (11)

The other day the kids & I went to my mother’s house to celebrate her birthday. Before I left I checked on the alpacas. The two girls who were (over)due looked fine so we left and had a fun day with my parents in Gulf Shores. I intended to be back before dark, but got back just after the sun went down. As I walked outside to the fields to check on the alpacas I looked down and saw a tiny cria sitting next to Foxy Lady. They were up next to the fence just sitting there like nothing was unusual at all about that.

I rushed inside their pen and picked up the cria. It was dry so it had been born earlier in the day. I wanted to see if it was a boy or girl, but it was too dark, so I had to feel around to try to determine what it was. I was pretty sure it was a girl, and as I held her up in the moonlight, I could see by her face that she was a Magnum daughter. Just the look of her jaw…well, I know what his babies look like and I saw him in her face. (Of course I knew her mom was bred to him, but it was so amazing to see it so clearly in the moonlight like that.) I guessed she was some sort of fawn, but I’d have to see that in the morning. (The whites shine in the moonlight. If you’ve ever seen a garden of white flowers in the moonlight you’ll know what I mean.)

This little girl was not only walking around, she was running around and it looked like she was nursing too. This was excellent news! Her dam, Foxy Lady, was a first time mom. Sometimes first time moms don’t know quite what to do with their babies, or they don’t have milk yet. Various things can happen with them, but it looked like nature had done a perfect job while we were gone that day. A textbook birth and bouncing baby girl.

Since she was born on my mom, Suzy’s birthday, I decided to name this little cutie “Suzy Q” after her. This video was taken the next day. I hope you enjoy it as much as we are enjoying her!

October 4th, 2011 | Tags: alpaca, Alpacas, cria, new addition, Suzy Q, textbook alpaca birth, video, You Tube | Category: Alpacas, New Additions, video | Comments (1)