Yes, we’ve got it! This yucky flu has gotten our family down this week. The up side is that I have an excuse to rest and watch Barbie movies with my daughter. Click on the above button for the latest information from the CDC about H1N1 flu and how you can protect yourself and your family.
Earlier this summer I came in from the barn and told everyone, “I just saw the sweetest thing that I have ever seen on this farm!”
“I saw the sweetest thing I’ve ever seen yesterday!” my husband Steve said.
We had both seen the same thing. Our macho herdsire, Magnum, kissing his daughter, Molly.
It is not unusual for a dam (momma alpaca) and cria to nibble and “kiss” at each others mouths. They nuzzle, touch noses, and love on each other. The males are kept in separate pens. They don’t usually interact with cria.
Magnum is housed in a run in the main barn between two pens of females. He can flirt with the girls in the next pen. He generally gets to breed with most of them when they are open so he holds court in the middle of the barn, and when everybody is bred he is the happy king of his castle. (He can tell when they are open and gets frisky to try to get to the girls to breed them.)
Magnum has a few offspring in the pens adjacent to his. We have seen him “talking” to his little sons over the fence, and we imagine him telling them about life, teaching them the ropes. But we have not been sure if he knew they are his offspring, or if he thought they were just cria, or if he thought he was such a stud that every cria was his!
Then we saw him with Molly. Molly is a Magnum daughter who is close to breeding age and size. She is big enough that Magnum would normally have figured out that she wasn’t pregnant, and would be orgling (alpaca mating noise designed to make the females weak in the knees) and jumping up on the panels that separated them. But he wasn’t doing this at all. He was kissing Molly. On the mouth. Sweet as a mother and new baby!
I first noticed it one morning as the alpacas were being brought into the barn. As soon as Molly came into her stall that adjoins Magnum, she went up to him and gave him a kiss. It was cute. But they stayed that way, just kissing on each other, nibbling, and touching noses. Before you think this is gross, let me tell you – this was NOT a sexual thing. I know our boy Magnum. He was NOT courting this girl. When he does that – it’s pretty obvious. He was gently loving her.
Freaking out at the extreme cuteness, I ran to get Jeremy, our farm manager, to borrow his phone to take pictures. “Oh yeah,” he said, “They were doing that yesterday.” Well they had stopped by the time I found a camera. I was disappointed that I wouldn’t be able to capture the moment.
When Steve said that he had seen the same thing as well, I was determined to capture it. These photos were taken on my phone over a 10 minute time frame where Magnum was completely, totally in love with his little girl.
These moments were so intimate, and their affection so strong, that it was a privilege to be able to witness (and record) them. Magnum is one of the most intelligent animals I have ever had the joy of knowing. I don’t doubt anymore that he knows his offspring. If I can recognize the resemblance, I am certain he can as well. Perhaps there is some sort of biological thing happening as well that allows him to know his cria. Whatever it is, we are so blessed to have this incredibly complex and wonderful male be a part of our lives.
What have you seen animals do that surprised you? What displays of animal emotion have touched your life?
Our Great Pyrenees Livestock Guard Dogs are good with kids
I don’t know who was happier to have the kids at the barn this weekend – me or the dogs!
Aza loves a belly scratch!
One guilty secret that I have is that I don’t have my kids help me with the farm every day. They do help, and they know how to do many chores, but during the summer – I let them sleep many weekend mornings rather than roust them out of bed to do farm chores.
When we home schooled there was more time for the kids to be involved with the alpacas. All of my children have helped halter train alpacas, and have showed them in Performance Obstacle Classes. My oldest has even shown in Championship Halter Classes. But now that they go to regular school they barely have time for homework and enrichment activities during the week.
Recently a Twitter friend suggested that I put the kids to work digging ditches and putting up fencing. Now he may not have realized how old my children were (6-12), but when I read that I thought, “Man, my kids have it good.” Too good?
It does take 30 days of doing something to make it a habit. I’m sure my parents will be proud that I learned something in 8 years of graduate school. Repeating a behavior over and over again tricks your brain into thinking that it has to do that same thing again. Think about the times when you drive home and you don’t remember the whole drive. You don’t have to think about every turn yet you make to your house. Your brain and body have a memory for it, and they can be put on a sort of autopilot to get the job done. That’s what we are trying to make happen for whatever you choose to do for 30 days.
This month I am joining Mrs. Flinger and some other bloggy types in a 30 days of ___? challenge. Choose a habit you would like to pick up, and do it for thirty days. I wish I could say I was choosing exercise, but since my life is super chaotic right now getting the kids ready for back to school, trying to get the house ready to sell, and the ever present alpaca herd that also demands on my time….Anyway I am going to drink a glass of water every day. Simple, but probably a good idea for me since I never drink anything but Diet Coke. (seriously never) I’ve been told my drinking habits aren’t good. Go figure.
So join me in doing something every day for 30 days. This will be fun, and doing it together gives us the support and accountability that helps make a task like this easier to accomplish. Leave a comment if you would like to participate and tell us what you are going to do for thirty days.
Paca Buddies Xman and Colt McCoy are Participating in Wordless Wednesday.
"It's Wednesday? Feels like a Monday."
You know how babies, puppies, and kittens will get into rolls of toilet paper? Here’s the alpaca version. Alpaca youngsters got into a roll of giant flypaper for the barn.
Thanks to Melissa from Hidden Gem Alpaca Ranch for sharing this shot of “Troublesome Trinity”. She’s a doll!
Participating in Wordless Wednesdays.
| Alpaca farm prepares for World Alpaca Conference |
This is a great video about alpacas featuring Tripp Forstner of Magical Farms (with a cameo of dad and king of their alpaca farm, Jerry Forstner) Magical Farms is home to approximately 1600 alpacas! They do alpacas on a significantly larger scale than most of us. The majority of alpaca breeders have under 30 alpacas in their herds.
Tripp is well-known as the guy in the show ring with the red bowtie. He can often be found winning Championship banners with various alpacas from Magical Farms. Over the years we have bought several alpacas from their farm and have always been impressed that they were able to offer such great customer service for such a large operation. Read more about one of America’s largest alpaca farms. Enjoy the video!
BEFORE. When this little alpaca female was born a couple of weeks ago…
…her ears were a bit wonky. Inside out, if you will.
This is something that happens occasionally. It is not genetic and is no cause for alarm. Ears like this can occur from prematurity or just being positioned that way in utero. Several times a day we work with the ears and “fix them” the right way with our fingers. Often this will be enough and the cria’s ears will then remain in the correct position. In some cases, like this one, more intervention is required to correct the ears.
With little Mimosa here, we taped her ears. The ears were placed into the proper shape, next we used vet wrap (pink – she’s so girly) to secure the shape. The vet wrap was slippery and wanted to just slide right off so we added vet tape at the base of the ear to keep it in place. We were concerned that using the really sticky vet tape over the whole ear would take out lots of fiber with it when we pulled it off (OUCH!) so we only used the sticky tape at the base of the ear.
I wish Mimosa would have held her ears up for these pictures. She usually had them up and alert. She looked like she had pink horns. It was too cute. Once the camera came out, though, she wouldn’t do it. (kids…)
We left the ‘ear wrap’ on for a couple of days. You don’t want to leave it on too long and you may have to do this several times for the ears to get with the program. Mimosa’s ears were fine within a few days.
AFTER. Here’s Mimosa after her ears were taped for a few days. Pretty as a picture!
Now it’s not her ears that make Mimosa stand out. It’s her curious personality. She and Dexter have become best friends. They are always hanging around each other, playing. Thick as thieves. I’ll have to post some pictures of them playing soon.
