life... on the farm: New Cria

We worked out a trade for 3 females. On Friday, J drove to Ohio to pick them up (dropping off Navigator on the way, and picking up Tucker).

Introducing Lucy:

I love her big eyes! Lucy is bred, due on June 13, 2011. Lucy is a five year old beige female.

Vanilla Latte came to us with her 3 day old cria at side! Latte and cria are both fawn. The cria is tiny, at 13 pounds. We've never had one that tiny on our farm. Our smallest one born this year was 17 pounds (smallest ever we believe was Shelby, who was 14 pounds at birth). We dug out all our cria coats to keep her toasty warm.

Latte reminds me a lot of our own Tehya (same coloring, and Felix in the ancestry). Latte will be four years old at the end of October. The cria, yet to be named, was born on Wednesday.

The Adventure of a Lifetime

Our farming adventure began with the purchase of 3 alpacas in the fall of 2007. This eventually grew to an alpaca farm that birthed 23 cria. While we averaged 20 alpacas on a farm at any given time, we hit a peek of over 30 alpacas. We were involved in every aspect of alpaca farming: from breeding decisions, birthing, to attending alpaca shows, and shearing our own alpacas along with making product from their luscious fiber (hand spinning yarn and knitting product). We participated in 24 alpaca shows, and became very involved in the alpaca community.

In 2013 we added hair sheep to our farm.

Throughout this process we continued to tweak and revise our business plan. Our business plan evolved over time, and in 2013 it became clear that our goal was to raise grass fed animals for human consumption. While the initial plan was for this to go along side of alpaca farming, we slowly came to the conclusion our adventure was going to take us somewhere else.

In 2013 we began to sell off our alpaca herd to begin our new adventure with grass fed sheep and cattle.

Our adventure is still unfolding, so please, join us in our adventure of a lifetime as our journey unfolds.

life... on the farm

Sunday, October 3, 2010

New Cria

2 comments:

Followers