Snowshoe FancyPants is a daughter of two champion alpacas. She gave birth to her first cria last year, a beautiful beige female we named Snowshoe Haiku. FancyPants is an excellent mother. She is an easy keeper and breeder. Her fiber is fine with good character and a soft handle. We’re … Read More
Today was “the big day” for our four weanling males. They’ve been out of the girls’ barn for a while now, but have been housed in a small barn away from the “big boys”. Â We don’t like to put small males in with large males. The males play a lot … Read More
This is the kind of winter’s day we live for…sorta. It’s mild and sunny and the snow is perfect. Â But we know what comes next. Tonight’s forecast is for snow, then freezing rain, then rain. Things are gonna get ugly. So we take pics while things are lookin’ good. … Read More
The new year is barely underway and it’s already time to start registering for the spring alpaca shows. This year the AOBA National Conference will be held in Harrisburg, PA and that’s a lot closer to home than usual for nationals. Â So how can we NOT go to this show, … Read More
No sooner are the holidays over and, instead of enjoying the relative quiet of winter on the farm, we are already faced with making decisions about and getting registered for spring alpaca shows. We have to decide which alpacas we will be taking to which shows so we reserve the … Read More
We have a number of husbandry tasks that are done on a regular basis. Today we took advantage of the relatively mild weather and weighed and body scored our 2011 crias and weanlings. We weigh young alpacas more often than adults as a way to keep track of their growth. … Read More
It’s that time of year again…we’ve weaned most of last year’s crias and they are big enough to wear halters comfortably. This means it’s time to start lead training. We start by fitting the alpacas with halters and letting them wear the halters for short periods for a few days. … Read More
Our herd was due for its dectomax injections this week, so we took advantage of the gray, wet, but still fairly mild weather to get that chore done today. Snow is in the forecast for tonight and more seasonable temps to follow. It’s time… Tomorrow the crias get their oral … Read More
We’re been working on herd health this week. Each afternoon, we pick a group of alpacas and check each alpaca’s weight and body condition, trim its toenails and give it a dectomax injection. It’s been good to see some of the alpacas that were skinny during the winter (like moms … Read More
We’re having a mild spell, so we decided to wean a few of our older, larger crias. Today each of them had a brief halter training session as we weighed them and walked them to their new pen. Looks like this group is going to need a little more work…