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!

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!

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!

A friend of mine was recently dealing with a cria whose temperature she couldn’t get to go down and stay down.  After thinking about it, I realized there are several reasons why a cria might have a high temperature, particularly in the summer. A brief discussion on the possible causes of elevated cria temperature follows:

In Alabama all summer we have been dealing with unseasonably hot/humid weather, the kind that combine for those nasty heat indexes we don’t usually see until August. So heat stress is going to be suspect number one for the poor cria. However you have to look at the age of the cria and the situation as well. If it’s not heat stress, or if heat stress measures aren’t doing the trick, lets look at the other possible culprits.

In my experience newborn cria who have difficulty regulating their temperature may do so as a result of neurological damage. When that has happened to my cria it has been related to birth trauma. At least that was our assessment along with our vet’s. It can also have to do with prematurity or dysmaturity. However, whatever the cause the result is a cria who can get a high temp in the sun, then when brought into an air conditioned room can have that temp go much lower. In other words you have an animal whose human caretaker has to control it’s temp because it cannot do so on its own. In cases of neurological problems like this, a product called DMSO can be helpful. Using gloves we put DMSO* on the cria’s ears and top of head/behind the ears. Also apply to underbelly between the legs, avoiding umbilical and genitals. Doing this several times a day can stimulate brain connections and it can be very helpful with bringing around a cria with neurological symptoms of any kind.

Another possibility is that the cria may have an infection of some sort that is causing her to spike a fever. When this happens to our cria we usually consult with our vets and have the cria put on antibiotics to cover them just in case they have an infection (such as pneumonia) and to prevent/treat a possible septicemia which might take them to alpaca heaven.

Just a few thoughts on crias and temps from this blasted hot climate on a hot summer day. What are your thoughts alpaca lovers?

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* You can get DMSO from your vet. If you get it on your skin while applying, you will taste the stinky stuff for awhile. Not pleasant, so be careful with it.

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?

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.

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?

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.

In recent days, I had been nursing an alpaca that our vet suspected had developed a gastric ulcer (perhaps more than one). To paraphrase a beloved and revered vet in the alpaca industry, “When an alpaca develops a stomach ulcer, she usually goes on to alpaca heaven.”  We had been treating our alpaca girl, throwing everything but the kitchen sink at her trying to save her…but nothing seemed to be working. Sad, resigned, I continued to treat her, and to try.

On this particular morning,  the kids had just gotten off to school, and I was hoping to take a little bit of time at the house before heading to the barn. The Artist was doing farm chores that morning to give me a break. I had just settled in to pay some bills and do some seriously neglected paperwork, when I realized that the Artist was heading out there first thing. Oh no! I jumped up and threw on some clothes.

Murphy’s Law. What Can Go Wrong Will Go Wrong. You know how this law applies to your life right? I believe this life applies in spades on a farm.

Remember how I said that the Artist is hit the hardest by death? Well, he also has the uncanny, extremely unfortunate ability to happen upon about 80% of animals that have died as well. Luckily alpacas are pretty hearty creatures and it doesn’t happen a lot, but I swear when it does happen HE always seems to be the one to be there. Because he’s the one who’s the most heartbroken. It really stinks.

I had been working the farm all week, and was really looking forward to the Artist doing some chores for me that morning so I could stay inside (where it was warm & cozy) past 9am, but I did not have a good feeling about my little ulcer girl so I flew out the door. I wanted to get to the patient before he did.

Whew! I could see that the Artist was still at the boys’ barn. Yes! Bullet dodged! I scurried to the main barn, said a quick good morning to my herdsire Magnum, and went to check on my little girl with the ulcer.

I stopped still in front of her stall.

She was all alone in there. dead.

“Damn,” I said, tears welling up in my eyes.

I stomped my foot just a little. My breath made a cloud in front of me from the cold.

I went into my office and wrote “deceased” on her paperwork with a wry sense of satisfaction that I had gotten some paperwork accomplished.

Then I went in search of a tarp with which I could move her sad, lifeless body.

I found a tarp in the shed. As I was coming back with the tarp I saw the Artist. Seeing the tarp, he knew that my patient had died. We exchanged sympathetic looks, and I headed back for the barn.

As I was walking through the gates and closing them behind me, I was thinking about millions of things. Meanwhile my brain was processing these additional thoughts as I looked at the alpacas as I passed by them:

baby alpaca. grey alpaca. tiny alpaca. there are no babies in that pen. wait. there should be no babies in that pen.

Finally my brain focused in on what it was trying to see and process:

We had been blessed with a new baby alpaca that morning!

Even though his dam, Rose Point, had not been due for three whole weeks, she had had a healthy rose gray baby boy!

The elation we felt was a balance to the sadness of losing our little girl from the ulcer. The rainy day was saved by the sunshine at the end. Does the sunshine make up for all the rain? No, but they work together to form the very fabric of life. They are woven together, like a tapestry. It is impossible to have one without the other.

I believe that farming is a metaphor for life, a venue for life to play out on nature’s stage. There is death and there is life. And what a blessed day it is when you can see all these things at work in the back yard before 10:30AM.