Dark Rose Grey!?

can it be?!

I have wanted a dark rose gray since I first saw one. It is dark brown with gray hairs running through it. I have thought that they look pink with this color combination.

Well, we had Pocahontas's cria tips shorn off near the end of last week. We got out our color chart but still were not sure what color she is. She definitely has dark brown, but we couldn't tell if maybe there was some black in there making her a bay black or what. This weekend we were doing herd health and J notice gray on her tail, then we looked and could see it all over her chest and neck. We dug around in her blanket and it's there too! A dark rose gray :)

Auntie Maddie

Maddie has always been one of my favorite alpacas. She has such a nice disposition. She's never spit at me, or even seemed angry with me (unlike some others that give me nasty looks all the time). We've always known the young alpacas look up to Maddie and she acts like a aunt to them, taking them under her wing. This past week we've seen why they love her so much. Our dog, Quinn, an American Eskimo, got loose in the pasture. He's not supposed to be there, but he was. It's impossible to catch him. I tried to talk Spot (our great Pyrenees) into chasing Quinn and catching him for us, but Spot wasn't interested. So Quinn runs around like a crazy dog all over the pasture. The moms, who you would think would naturally protect their young ones, barely even look up while munching in the hay bin. Instead, Maddie, who has not yet had a baby, sees Quinn running all crazy and barking and she herds the babies into the paddock. Maddie stands between barking Quinn and all the cria! I told her I knew she was my favorite for a reason :)

We think Maddie is now pregnant, so she will have a chance to be a mom come next summer. She is going to be a great mom too.

Busy with Fiber

Fiber is what they call the fur on the alpacas. Selling the fiber and fiber products should bring in enough income to offset the cost of feeding and vet care of the alpacas for the year. Though, I have to say when we initially went to visit alpaca farms, we found many of them had bags and bags of fiber in their basement or attic. I swore I was getting into alpacas to do something with the fiber. I had envisioned having yarn made at a mill, then I would knit product. After seeing someone hand spin, I decided I wanted to give that a try too. I love it! Knitting is great too :)

So, now comes the hard part of marketing our product. Well, not hard, but not my personal favorite thing to do. I'm more a behind the scenes person. I love spinning the fiber and knitting things. I'm not so fond of washing fiber and flicking (sort of like carding) the fiber, and promoting it. But it's all part of the process.

To start, I put fiber lots on our Alpaca Nation page. I didn't expect that to draw in a lot of people since many farms have fiber up for sale. Plus, most people on Alpaca Nation have their own alpacas. But, it got me to sort our fiber and start the process of selling it. I also set up my Etsy store. I am excited about getting that up and running. A dear friend of mine, Eliz, bought the first lot of fiber from us. She wants to try dying and felting. She bought some of our coarse fiber for this project. I am anxious to hear how her projects work out!

We will have a booth at Grant's Frontier Festival in mid-August. They will allow us to have some alpacas there, so we are planning to take Shelby, Tehya and Brooklyn. Ashton Stone Alpacas will be there too. I think Jillian and I will spin some yarn and see who stops by the booth. I won't have a lot of product ready by then, but I will have raw fiber available, and I will have samples of yarn and products (scarves) for people to see. We will have order forms since I don't have product ready for purchase. I am also looking into getting a booth at a fiber fair in White Cloud for Labor Day weekend. I likely will only have raw fiber for them too.

I have been very busy getting samples of product put together. I washed a sample of Maddie's fiber, Tehya's fiber and Victoria's fiber, and have that spun into a sample of yarn. Maddie's I started to knit into a scarf to show what it will look like in a finished product. I have to say Tehya's was the most fun to spin! She has variation of color (beige to light fawn to medium fawn). The yarn is so soft because it's her first fleece, and the color is heathered that looks so neat. I still need to get a sample of Sommerfield's spun up (it's washed but not spun). For fun, I mixed up some yarn, for example, I had a bit of Victoria's spun up but only 1 strand, so I plied it with a strand of Maddie's fiber. The mix of brown and black is really neat. I knit up a sample of what that will look like in a product. I also did a mix of Victoria (brown) and Tehya (heathered fawn). That one is so pretty too.

This has been what has been keeping me busy lately. It's all about fiber :)

Etsy

I'd love some feedback on the Etsy account I just set up:

oakhavenalpacas.etsy.com

Other than raw fiber, I only have 1 ball of handspun yarn ready for sale. I'm working on more things! But I thought it would be good to get this account up and going.

New Genetics - a trade

A neat way to spice up your herd's genetics is to trade animals with another farm. We offered Sommerfield up in trade. We have her brother, her mother, and now her younger sister, we don't need so many from the same line.

A farm in Ohio offered up their girl, Brooklynn, in trade for Sommerfield. Brooklynn was born in December, so she is 7 months old. She was only recenlty weaned from her mom. But she's a big girl! We are excited to add her as a foundation animal to our herd. She has completely different genetics than we currently have. She has a different look to her too, especially in her face, a cute look at that!





Welcome to our farm, Brooklynn!

Cavalier Pictures

Newborn pictures:







Birthday picture with his mom, Victoria:



This one is from today, he's a couple days old:



Here are all our 2009 cria - Lily is white, Po is brown and Cavalier is fawn:

The Cavalier

Our newest alpaca cria was born today sometime between noon and 2 p.m. I checked on Victoria at noon, and decided she did not look like she was in labor. She was in the barn chewing on some hay. So, I took Zack swimming. Emma called us around 2:30 p.m. and said she saw a baby on ground in the pasture.

It's a boy :) Baby was up and walking well by the time I got there to check on him. He looks like a fading fawn. Dad is Peruvian Twister from Sanborne's Great Northern Alpacas. Twister is fawn. Victoria is our maroon, dark brown.

Birth weight is 17.4 pounds. He was born on day 354, healthy and doing well.

For Victoria's offspring we have been using a "car" theme (using the name of cars as the offspring's name). We had a really hard time coming up with a name. We had several picked out, but none of them seemed to fit. He's tough, but elegant. All the names seemed tough and rugged. Finally we arrived on Cavalier, that has an elegant yet masculine feel to it. To make it formal we decided on The Cavalier. We will use our Oak Haven logo of OHVN The Cavalier.

This finishes cria season for this year. We are blessed with 3 wonderful cria. All are healthy and doing well. We continued our 2 girls and 1 boy ratio that we had last year.

Tucker's Sweater

This past weekend I blocked the sweater so it is ready to be worn. I do still need some buttons, but haven't found the right ones yet. This is me in the sweater with Tucker. He doesn't seem too impressed though.

Victoria

We are still waiting on a baby from Victoria. We can see it in there, every so often a leg can be seen on her side.




This past weekend I spun up some of Victoria's fiber into yarn. One ball is 5 oz, the other 3.5 oz:



This is what the yarn looks like:

My sweater

It might have been greedy for me to first make something for myself. But I wanted something I could wear to alpaca shows and craft fairs to show off our alpaca product. This is a very artsy sweater. For one, I spun it with any color variation that came along. I could have picked out the really white parts and the browish spots to make the color uniform. I chose to keep it artsy and natural. It is also one of my first spinning adventures so the yarn has it's bumps and variation. This makes it very natural and artsy looking.

I am exicted how the sweater turned out. I did have to make some changes in order to get it right in the end, but it's finally there!

I do need to block it yet and put on buttons. The way it's hanging here is a bit off center, but it gives you the idea:




After I finished my sweater, I washed up Victoria's fiber from 2 years ago. To wash it, I put a bunch of it in a netting bag and wash it in sink with very hot water. The first time I put some dawn dish soap in there first to clean it. I fill the sink with hot water and dawn, then immerge the bag of fiber. I let it sit for 15 mintues then squeeze it out. You do have to be careful because aggitation will cause the fibers to felt, and I don't want that! I sometimes repeat with another dawn washing, depending on how dirty it is. Then I do at least two soakings in plain water to rinse off the soap. This is what it looks like in the sink:

Once I have it clean, I spread the fiber out on a skirting table J made for me that we keep in our basement. While laying there, we will fluff up the fiber from time to time to help it dry and make sure it doesn't set in a clump. Then I use a flicker to make a cloud of fiber to spin from. Another option would be to send it to a mill and have rovings made to spin from. So far I've done fine with a cloud that we do ourselves. It saves my having to wait for the mill :)

Once I have the sweater blocked and buttons on, I'll post a picture of me in it.

Young Alpacas

Our 2009 cria, Lily and Po (Pocahontas) have become very good friends. They often graze together, or on cooler evenings they love to pronk around the pasture. This is my favorite thing to witness as they will run full force down the hill and chase each other. Here they are about ready to take a nap. Note Kateri is right by her baby, she is ever the doting mom.



Shelby and Tehya turned a year old last week. They continue to grow and amaze us with their fiber. They are fiber machines! We are amazed at their staple length. I'm excited to see how their fiber spins. Tehya looks more and more like her father, Goldsmith, and Shelby continues to be her cute self with that full facial coverage.

Here's Tehya at a year old:



This is Shelby with her woolly face:



Often times as they age their faces become less covered in fiber. There are mixed feelings on how well people like facial coverage. Some people love the look, some say it indicates density, other feels it makes it difficult for them to see. I do like the look, but in Shelby's case, we have to trim some by her eyes because she does sometimes have a hard time seeing well.

Fiber weekend

I spent my weekend working on the alpaca fiber. Last weekend I washed up Victoria's fiber from 2 years ago. I love her color, it's a reddish brown that is sometimes referred to a maroon. J was so nice as to fluffy up the fiber and help it dry throughout this last week. This weekend I was ready to start spinning it into yarn. I wondered how her fiber would spin. I've read that the crimp in the fiber is supposed to help with spinning. Crimp is the wavy lines that you can see when you spread the fiber apart. So far I have only spun Tucker's fiber, and he has nice crimp. Victoria has a lot of wonderful attributes, but she lacks crimp. Because I had been under the impression crimp was better for spinning, I was pleasantly surprised to find I loved spinning Victoria's fiber. It spins so smoothly. I am spinning this into a very fine yarn, as that is what it seems to want to do naturally.

After spinning just a little of Victoria's fiber, I wanted to do that all weekend! It was so smooth and pretty. But, I also wanted to complete my sweater. I had done the sleeves over the last week, but when I went to put them on the sweater, I realized I had done the pattern wrong. They had to be redone. Saturday Zack wanted to go swimming, and since he needed someone to supervise him, I agreed to go. I took that as a great time to knit up those sleeves, for the 2nd time. I thought I was knitting so fast, as I finished the sleeves during his swim. Then, come to find out he swam for 4 hours!

That night I sewed the seams to put the sweater together only to find out that the front panels did not match up. I know I checked and double checked that they would, but here it was plain to see when I put the sweater on that the pattern on one side started lower than it did on the other side. So, I had to take out the seams, including the neck band that I had knit, to free up one front panel for me to adjust where the pattern started. Sunday Zack wanted to swim again, so I set up my chair and knitting right by the pool. Sunday he *only* swam for 3 hours, but it was enough for me to fix the front panel and put all the seams back together. It's done!

I still need to wash and block it. I have never done this step before, and anything new gives me a bit of anxiety. I'm sure it will be fine. I also need to find some buttons because it's a short sleeve cardigan sweater that requires four buttons. I don't want any old button on there, so this could take some looking. I'm thinking something black with a wood texture would really be neat.

I am so excited to have my own alpaca sweater to wear!

New baby pictures

To keep with our Native American theme for Kateri's offspring, we are going to name this baby: Pocahontas. A neat connection is that Pocahontas snuck off to be with John Smith, and our baby's father is The Buccaneer (a pirate), carrying on an against the law type theme.

Kateri is a very attentive mother. She was with Tehya and again we see it with this baby.



To get a size comparison, here is our dog, Spot:


We wondered how Kateri would be with Spot sniffing around her baby. So far she has been fine. Spot is actually very good with the cria. We worried because at the last farm he was at he was only in with the boys. Here, our boys don't like him :( they give him mean glares. The pregnant females are further back in the woods and need the most protecting, so Spot is on guard there.

Garden Pictures

The beginning:


Our garden is coming along well. These pictures are from a couple weeks ago, so we have even more growth now.

Summer Squash:


Pumpkins:


Peas and Beans:


Tomatoes:


We also have green peppers and hot peppers, lots of herbs and some corn. We have all we need for some awesome home made salsa :)

How to survive the heat

Last week we had some very hot days (it hit 100* at our house on one of the days!).

The alpacas do not handle heat very well. They actually handle the cold better, given their very warm and thick fiber. Even shorn, they still do not handle heat very well. We have fans on in the barns anyday it gets above 75*. On the really hot days, we hose them off:



The key to hosing them off is where you put the water. It doesn't do them a whole lot of good to wet down their back. In fact, it can ruin their fiber if they get wet too far down and it doesn't dry out well (not an issue when they are newly shorn, but could be later on in the season). Alpacas regulate their temperture by their belly. There they have the least amount of fiber too. In the winter, Alpacas cush (sit down) and keep their bellies covered to warm up. Cushed down in the hay is a great way for them to stay warm on a very cold day. In the heat, cooling down their belly helps their whole body cool down. I aim the hose right at their belly, between their two front legs (as seen above).

This is our first year with a great pyreneese. Poor guy has a lot of fur. You aren't suppose to shave their fur as that puts them at risk for sun burn. They do naturally thin out their fur during the summer, but it's still miserable for them on really hot days. We have a lot of shade for Spot, and places he can get out of the elments. But on the really hot days, I fill a pool for him, that he loves!



I do want to make a note about pools. Some alpacas like to cush in the pool to cool down. Sancha has been known to do this. She jumps in and jumps out as quick as a flash. There are concerns about this. For one, as our vet pointed out, bugs can grow in water, so make sure to put in new water each day, do not leave water in there for days at a time. Also, newborn cria have been known to drown in a pool, so I would not leave it unattended anywhere near a due date (even if the alpaca is not known to go in the pool, it's not worth the risk). I've also heard of it possibly linked to mastitis (breast infection in a mother). This could be avoided by making sure the water is rinsed frequently and clean, and that the alpaca does not sit in it for hours at a time. A quick cush by Sancha and Spot standing in it is about all our pool ever sees. I make sure to empty it when I'm not there and to rinse it out everday we use it.

The Product

What is the purpose of raising alpacas? Well, there is selling the babies, and we do want to do that. We will run out of room otherwise.

But another very important part of the industry is the fiber the alpacas produce. I taught myself to knit, and I just starting spinning the fiber. My first project is a sweater for myself. I may have taken on a big undertaking in that I've never knit a sweater before (only tried hats and mittens and scarfs). And this is my first time spinning the yarn. But I decided I might as well just dive in.

So far I have the back of the sweater done:



And I started on one of the sides (it's a cardigan so it will have two sides for the front):


In my basement I have a "fiber room":


This is where I have a sewing machine (thank you grandma ;) ), and bags of fiber from the animals. These bags are just the prime fiber from this year, I have a lot more bags of fiber from previous years:


I should move my skirting table in there, so all the fiber stuff is in one location. My spinning wheel is in the living room so that I can grab it when I sit down to watch tv.

I need to set aside some time to finish this sweater. Then onto things I can sell :)

We have a baby!

I just got a call from J, who is at home this morning. He said Kateri had a baby girl! He said that she had a bit of a hard presentation, like when Lightning was born, in that one of the front legs was bent back. J had to assist a bit to help deliver the baby. But mom and baby are doing well.

He said the baby is a girl, he's not sure if she is very dark brown (he said she's definitely darker than Kateri) or if she might be bay black (a mix of dark brown and black). It can be hard to tell their color right away because of them being wet from birth and because the amniotic fluid often lightens the color.

That makes baby #5 for our farm and our 4th girl!

Kateri delivered her cria on day 339.

Editted to Add:

Now I'm home and I've had a chance to see the cria. She's a beauty! She weighed in at 15.6 pounds, the exact same as her older sister, Tehya (must be mom runs out of room at that weight). She's getting up and down from a sternal position very well. She hums to her mom. Mom is, of course, very protective. Kateri is a very hands on mom. The baby seems to have good energy and is moving great. She may be a bit premature in that her ears, while erect, are a bit floppy, and her teeth are not erupted as much as our others one have been. But she is doing great so not concerns.

Garden Update

This is our first year of having our own garden. At first we saw little progress, but just as the temperatures outside began to climb, our garden started to burst to life.

We first noticed the summer squash and zucchini coming up. Then we saw the peas and beans. As the hot weather hit, the peas and beans sprung to life. We have a couple tomatoes starting to form and we can see some peppers. The corn is a bit sparse and the watermelon did not come up at all. We planted some more corn to help fill it in, and will get some more watermelon seeds.

I think we are going to have a great crop this year! Let's hope the weather continues to cooperate.

Hot and Pregnant

I thought I had it bad back in 2002 when I had a 9 pound baby in August. Talk about hot and uncomfortable. Now I look at Kateri and I feel such empathy for her. She's been pregnant for 333 days. For several days now it's been in the high 80's with horrible humidity. She's huge and I'm sure so uncomfortable. I don't know if she's just carrying this baby different than she did Tehya, or if this baby is going to be that much bigger, I just know she looks huge. I expect she'll show us in the next week or so when that baby is born.

Not everything works out

I haven't posted about this because, well, I still feel sort of bad about the whole thing. Back in February we got some angora bunnies (see blog entry on February 15th for pictures and details). I had never seen an angora bunny until I started attending spinning guild. Once I saw those babies, I was hooked. They were so cute! Emma had been asking for a rabbit for such a long time, I decided we might as well. I was excited to mix angora and alpaca for some very soft yarn.

Well, it did not work out for us. Within a few weeks after getting them home, Snickers bit Emma. I decided it was an oversight on our part, possibly they were not getting enough attention. I started to work with the bunnies. Some progress was made, but Emma no longer wanted to be involved. Soon the chores of feeding and caring for the rabbits fell on J and I. With 3 dogs, 11 alpacas and 2 human children, we did not need another thing to care for.

Thankfully the farm they came from was willing and able to take them back. I am so thankful for that.

As the spring has hit and now we are into summer, I see that giving the rabbits back was for the best. I don't know how we would have fit them in with the crazy softball and baseball schedule we've had the last couple of months.

While pondering this, I decided that it's o.k. to say something doesn't work for you. I've always been one to stick with something no matter what. You take something on, and you do it. But, I know in my heart that we could not give these animals the care they deserve. So on that note I will say that I know they are doing well, and I'm relived that they are no longer our responsibility.

Those of you who can care for alpacas and dogs and bunnies, you rock! I know my limits and I've decided to stick with dogs and alpacas (and our 1 barn cat that seems to have 100 lives). No more new varieties of animals for me. But we are waiting on 2 baby alpacas :)