Our Peruvian Dark Thunder

Today, day 354, Sancha gave birth to our first cria from our male, SA Peruvian Greyt Exxpectations. We were very eager to see how Greyt's cria would turn out. We are very excited to say this cria is a mini of Greyt! It's hard to tell fiber characteristics on a newborn, but we can already see a lot of grey peeking through his dark brown fiber. He seems dense (it is hard to part his fiber to see his skin), with tons of curly cue fiber.

Birth stats:
Male
18.8 pounds
Dark Rose grey!

This is actually the smallest cria we've had from Sancha, the other 3 she has had on our farm have been 20+ pounds. But birth weight really doesn't indicate full grown weight. And actually I like the smaller size adults anyway (which was one of the reasons we bred Sancha to Greyt, he's the smaller size I like).

It's a boy :) And he appears to be a dark rose grey. At first J was saying he was brown, but I could see the grey all over his legs and as his fiber is starting to dry, we can see grey on his back and neck, just like his sire. I can't get over how much he looks like his sire, SA Peruvian Greyt Exxpectations. One look at this boy and we knew we are going to repeat this breeding!

For Sancha's offspring we have used the theme of nature. We joked early on that if she had a dark boy we should name him Dark Thunder, since another boy we had from Sancha we named White Lightning. When this dark boy was born, we knew Dark Thunder fit, so we named him: Our Peruvian Dark Thunder.

Isn't he cute?!





Every time we have a birth on our farm, I marvel at how nature works. Sancha is an experienced mom, but still, it's so impressive how she knows what to do. She didn't read any books (though maybe the alpaca moms hold mom meetings in the barn and talk about parenting methods, but I sort of doubt it). After we weighed the little guy, Sancha walked him over into the shade, clucked at him and nuzzled him with her nose so that he would go to nurse. After she nursed him, she walked him over to the poop pile. There she pooped and he peed:



I'm so impressed, only a few hours old and already potty trained!

Mom shows lots of affection towards him:



Here he is next to Cheyenne (we just weighed Cheyenne today and she is 24 pounds, growing very well).
In this picture (from left to right) is Tehya, Cheyenne, Thunder and Sancha:

Breeding

We have started breeding our open girls, Maddie, Latte, Jewel and Miss Kitty. Latte, Jewel and Miss Kitty came to us this past year open (not bred), and Maddie slipped her pregnancy last year (we discovered too late in the year to re-breed yet last year). Alpaca gestation on average is 350 days, pretty close to a year!! This means the girls we breed now will be due sometime late May 2012. Typically we have had girls due throughout the spring and summer (May through July). Though we would prefer to have them all due closer to the same time. That way when we are on cria watch, we can watch several at once. Now we watch one female, then weeks later another and so on. If we had more than one due right now, we could have sat home and watched Sancha all day Saturday, but had another one deliver. Since we do have two due in July, we rebred them about two weeks after they deliver so that means some will be due in July 2012, but for the ones we can, we'd like to coordinate due dates a little closer to each other.

This weekend we did three breedings:

Tucker to Latte





Greyt to Maddie





Tucker to Jewel (the newest girl on our farm)







Tehya delivered not too long ago, and should be ready to be bred again very soon. We didn't bred Miss Kitty yet either, so that breeding should be done soon too.

Our reasons for these breeding choices goes beyond the color of the alpaca. We look at all their qualities ~ micron, consistency of crimp, bundling, density, body style and so forth. It's exciting to think of the possibilities of what we can produce with each breeding choice.

Cria Watch

The fun part of cria watch is the day those new cria are born and you get to see this wonderful baby that you waited almost a year for!

The down side to cria watch is the waiting. And days like on Saturday, we were completely sure Sancha was in labor. She had all the classic signs. She was clearly uncomfortable. She wouldn't lay in the barn like she does every other day. She walked around and would pretend to nibble on hay, but we really just annoyed and agitated a lot. She squatted over the poop pile a few times and didn't produce any poop. We could see what we thought were contracts across her belly. I do have to say in the past I've seen contractions across their spine, I've never seen the kind we saw yesterday. She didn't have that cria yesterday, so she wasn't really in labor (false labor?). What we think happened is that the cria moved positions within her belly. She was uncomfortable. She was agitated. That cria was moving. But it wasn't eviction day.

During all this we canceled plans. We don't always do that when we think a female is in labor. Most of the time they deliver on their own and we don't have to be there. But given how agitated Sancha was, we were worried she was having difficulty and might need us there, so we stayed nearby (though often we sat inside the house so as to not agitate her further).

Since no cria was born, we have more days to look forward to where we could watch and wait and get all excited.... for nothing. It drives me crazy! But eventually that cria will have to be born, we will get to see this little one eventually.

July Cria

Our girls, Victoria and Kateri, are due in July.

Kateri will hit day 350 on July 12, 2011 (I couldn't get a full fleece picture of Kateri separated from the others so here she is with Victoria, Kateri is standing up, Victoria is cushed on the ground):



Kateri after shearing:



After shearing, we had a bit of a worry that Kateri might not have kept her pregnancy. We believe she is pregnant, but not 100% sure. Her belly just doesn't look clearly pregnant like Sancha and Victoria do. And we know in years past Kateri has had a very large cria belly.

Kateri is bred to Lightning. This will be Lightning's first cria. Kateri's color are brown and black (Bb). We don't know what Lightning's secondary color is. Both his parents are white, and he is white. There are no known cases of an alpaca having two white genes, so he got one of his parent's secondary color, either black from Sancha or fawn from his sire (I believe his sire has a fawn secondary color).

The color combinations could be:
Kateri (Bb) x Lighting (WF) = BW, BF, bW or bF
50% chance of white (BW and bW)
50% chance of fawn (BF or bF)

or Kateri (Bb) x Lightning (Wb) = BW, Bb, bW, or bb
50% chance of white (BW, bW)
25% chance of brown (Bb)
25% chance of black (bb)

If the cria is fawn, we know Lightning's secondary color is fawn, and if the cria is brown or black, we know his secondary color is black. If the cria is white, we still won't know his secondary color.

As for due dates, I've heard that females tend to deliever around the same day each year. This has not been true for Kateri, her due dates have varied greatly: day 360, 342, 338, and 351.

Victoria will hit day 350 on July 20, 2011:



Victoria shorn (she clearly has a cria belly, which given she is due last might not make sense that she shows more than the others. But, keep in mind that Victoria is a smaller alpaca. She runs around 120 pounds, when Snickers, for example, is closer to 200 pounds. Snickers has a lot more rom to hide that cria, whereas Victoria has no room to spare. Victoria has always had average size heathly cria with no birthing difficulties, so while she is a bit smaller, she's healthy and our best producer):



Victoria's past delieveries have all been fairly close to day 350: day 355, 347, 354, and 343 (that last one was a bit out of her typical range).

Victoria is bred to Georgio. I've written before that Victoria may have a dilution gene (I wrote more about that here). More recently we've thought that maybe Victoria's mother is diluted (exhibits a color lighter than would be genetically passed on), but Victoria might not be. (If her mother is really a brown with a black secondary color, Victoria could have gotten a brown gene from her mother, in which case Victoria is not diluted at all. We won't know this for sure unless she has a diluted cria). So far none of her cria have been a diluted down color. So for now, I will treat her as a brown with a black secondary color. If the cria is lighter than expected, then we will know she has a dilution gene, but until then we will assume dilution isn't part of the equation.

Victoria (Bb) x Georgio (Fb) = BF, Bb, bF, bb
50% chance of fawn (BF, bF)
25% chance of brown (Bb)
25% chance of black (bb)

Last year I posted some links to articles about alpaca color genetics. I will link to that post here. Anyone who is interested in this, I encourage you to look at all the links in that post.

June Cria

At the bottom of the blog page I have each female's due date. We use day 350 (which means 350 days gestation) as our due date. Day 350 is the average of when alpaca cria are born. I know some farms use day 335, which many books cite as the due date for alpacas. But, we've found when we use day 335, we wait and wait and wait. We are too impatient to do that! Since most of our cria have been born from day 345 to day 360, day 350 is closer to when our females actually deliver. Given our girls our basically in our back yard, it's easy for us to keep an eye on them throughout the day, so for us "cria watch" doesn't mean much more than what we do everyday. Though I will say when we are close to day 350, I tend to rush out to the barn right when I get home from work just in case a cria was born.

We have two girls due in June 2011.

Sancha will hit day 350 on June 4, 2011 (this picture was taken pre-shearing):



And here is her belly post shearing. We are completely sure there is a cria in there, we've seen it move (alpaca farmers will talk about watching the dam's bellies, you really can waste a big part of the day watching and wondering if that cria will come today):




I know Sancha looks very thin now that she's shorn. As long as we've known her, Sancha has struggled to keep on weight. We feed her good, and actually she's at a better weight this year than in years past. All three of the cria she has had on our farm were 20+ pounds at birth, and she has had plenty of milk. While she is getting older, she is still a healthy production female.

We have our doubts if Sancha will make it to day 350 this year. She has delivered for us between day 350 and day 355 (she has had 3 cria on our farm: day 355, day 353 and day 350 - if that is a pattern then I think this year is will be day 346). This year she is due later in the year (June rather than May), and I can't help but think she holds out for warmer weather. This year she's due later so doesn't have to do that. And she looks like she's getting close. Only time will tell.

and Snickers will hit day 350 on June 30, 2011:



I couldn't get a decent picture of Snickers post shearing. I will say that her belly looks much smaller than Sanchas. We've even debated if Snickers is still pregnant or not. We believe she is, but not 100% sure

Snickers came to us bred, but absorbed that cria. It is not uncommon for an alpaca to absorb a pregnancy. This is their reaction stress, or natures way of dealing with a cria who is not developing right. I've read as many as 25% of pregnancies are absorbed (though I think that stat is high, it just shows that it is common). Once we realized Snickers was open, we decided to breed her to Georgio. Sancha we bred to SA Peruvian Greyt Exxpectations. This will be Greyt's first cria.

Every time there is a 50% chance of a male cria and a 50% chance of a female cria. The color of the cria goes back to genetics.

Sancha is bred to Greyt. Sancha is white and has a black secondary color (Wb). Greyt is a modern rose grey, with a brown base and a black secondary color (Bb). The modern grey color is a roaning gene and even the experts aren't sure how it's carried on genetically. (This is very different from the tuxedo grey color of our own Tucker, or the male we bred Tehya too. A tuxedo grey will pass on their grey 50% of the time. A roan grey is one that does not have white on their face/neck, the grey is mixed in throughout their blanket and fiber). Given the experts are even sure how the roan grey is passed on, we do not know what the chances are that this cria will get grey from Greyt. For color genetics (from what we've read from the experts) Greyt is basically a brown, and we should bred him as we would a solid brown, though that roaning gene could come through to produce a grey.

Sancha (Wb) x Greyt (Bb) = WB, Wb, bB, or bb

Which means the cria has:
50% chance of being white (remember the light color wins in the combinations, so both WB and Wb would be a white cria)
25% chance of being brown (bB)
and
25% chance of black (bb)

Snickers is bred to Georgio. Snickers is fawn with a black secondary color (Fb) and Georgio is fawn with a black secondary color (Fb).

Snickers (Fb) x Georgio (Fb) = FF, Fb, bF, bb

Which means the cria has:
75% chance of being fawn (FF, Fb, bF)
25% chance of being black (bb)

Summer Weather

After a few cool and rainy days we have some wonderful sunny and warm weather today. Alpacas don't always handle the heat so well (they do better with the cold). So on these hot days, we haul out the hose and spray them down. They love this! After they are hosed down, they usually roll in the sunshine. Then they lay and soak up the sun. Often this strikes up their appetite and they head over to the hay bucket.



I sometimes call their sunbathing stance a "death lay" because they could be mistaken for being seriously sick or even dead:



Sancha is due anyday now with her cria (she's on day 345, right in the midst of when most female alpacas deliver, day 335 to 370+). Sancha has had 3 cria on hour farm (this is her 4th). She typically delivers on day 350 - 356 and has a 20+ pound cria (average size cria is closer to 15 pounds). She grows them nice and big!

Sancha is the white alpaca on the far left of this picture, note the huge hanging cria belly on her:



We are very eager to see this cria. And I know Cheyenne would love a playmate. She tries to play with the other moms but they give her the cold shoulder. The excitement of seeing the new cria is so much fun: male or female, what color? But I also love seeing the cria play together. They form a cria gang and will have lots of fun together. I can't wait to see our 2011 cria gang.

Fiber

I haven't posted about working with fiber because to be honest, I haven't done much with it lately. Between the farm and work and family and training to run in a 10K, the thing that got dropped was spinning up yarn. And I did this horrible thing of starting to spin up some fiber I hate to spin. (I don't like very fine fiber because it's hard for me to spin, I end up over spinning it so it's no longer soft which is the benefit of fine fiber. And, this batch is an older bag that had lots of second cuts in it). Between not having much time and not really wanting to spin the fiber, I really got side tracked!!

Now that I have bags and bags of freshly shorn wonderful fiber to spin, I can't wait to get my hands on it! This is what motivated me to finish spinning up this white fiber over the last few days.

I flicked (my flicker in the box along with the second cuts I came across):



Here is the flicked fiber:



Spinning:



And plying two strands:



I decided I just wanted to get this yarn done, so I spun up a thicker chunky and at times lumpy yarn (those second cuts will come out as lumps if you don't skirt them all out). I figured a funky yarn would be fun (and would be quicker for me to spin up given the way this fiber is).

Today I am getting my hands all over some new fiber!!

Why!?

Why did I do this to myself?

Here I have all this wonderful freshly shorn fiber that I would love to spin up into yarn. I have great plans to spin up some of Bo's fiber. Yet, on my spinning wheel I have one strand of white, awaiting a second strand to ply to it. It has been in this state for far too many weeks to count. This white fiber, I don't enjoy spinning one bit. I only started it because I thought it would be nice for making an infant hat. And I certainly thought it would be completed way before shearing time.

Shearing the boys

This year we have four males on our farm to use as herdsires:



They were the first to be shorn this past Saturday morning. (It takes me a bit to crop all my pictures and get them up on the blog. We only have dial-up internet at home so loading pictures can be a day long undertaking. But, I know this blog without pictures just isn't the same).

The before pictures are previous pictures I had on hand of each of the boys. At their age, they don't change that much.

Our oldest breeding age male is ~ ARF Our Peruvian Tucker:



I think his face especially looks like a Dr. Seuss character:



Here Tucker is the center of the boys paddock:




The next oldest is SA Peruvian Greyt Exxpectations:





ATA Peruvian Boppana:




Bo's top knot had so many burrs and was starting to matt so we had to really trim it back. I know it will fill in again, and next time we won't let it get so bad so we won't have to trim it so much.



ATA Peruvian Harley:





While only Tucker has a cria on the ground (our own OHVNA Challenger), Greyt's first cria is due any day now (by our own Sancha). We hope both Bo and Harley are ready to breed this year. We have quite a few girls we will need to breed.

Shearing of the Juv's

On Saturday we set out to shear our male herdsires and then our juveniles. I think the transformation they go through with shearing is so dramatic, I wanted to capture the change in each of them.

For the juv's I did some group shots, and some individual pictures. It's hard to get a good picture of Rose, so she's the main one I couldn't get a good individual shot of.

Twilight, Rose and Chaska:



Gabe, Chaska, Rose, and Challenger:



Smokey's Twilight in full fleece:



Shorn:



OHVNA Chaska in full fleece:



Shorn:



OHVNA Challenger in full fleece:





Shorn:



Gabriel Star of RobAsia in full fleece:



Shorn:



And some group shorn pictures

Twilight, Rose and Chaska:



Chaska, Challenger and Rose:



Chaska, Challenger, Twilight:




I think these juvi's are so cute when shorn! But I might be biased, because I am also drooling over the bags of fiber that came off these wonderful creatures. The juvi's have the nicest fiber. I can't wait to start spinning some of it!