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 :)

Starting Cria Watch, again

We are basically starting cria watch on Kateri. The ticker down there gives her just over a month (1 month 5 days). I generally start watching a month in advance (since the window of delivery can be a month early to a month late). Last year Kateri delivered on day 341. Victoria on day 346. (based on some quick computations I think those are accurate). The tickers below are based on 350 days, so likely it will be close to a month yet, but we'll keep a closer eye on Kateri just in case it's earlier. I do know she's getting more ornery. When I brought food out to the girls last night she started spitting because she was so concerned she might not get a bowl. She always gets a bowl of grain, and spitting makes it hard for her to eat (that stomach acid in the mouth does not work well when they try to eat). But, I think it has more to do with pregnancy ornery hormones than anything else.

Kateri is bred to SHVN The Buccaneer, who is now owned by Full Tilt Alpacas. He's a true black and the 1/2 brother to our own Victoria. Their mom, Hana, has produced some incredible award winning cria. We hope the combination of Kateri's lineage and The Buccaneer will create one awesome cria.

Here's Buc:


Kateri is a light brown alpaca. Given what we've learned about color genetics, every alpaca has 2 main color genes (there are also dilution genes and spot genes but for simplicity, all alpacas have 2 main color genes). One color they exhibit as their color, the other color they can pass on to their babies, but they do not necessarily show it (some show a secondary color in ways like having black tipping on their extremities, but often times you do not see the secondary color at all). For the most part whatever is the lighter color is the one they exhibit, they carry the darker color that they can pass on. We believe Kateri carries the brown gene and a black gene (her mother is true black). A true black has 2 black genes, so her mom had to pass one on to Kateri. The Buccaneer is true black, so in any case he will pass on a black gene. We have a 50% chance of having a true black cria (if Kateri passes on her black gene) or a 50% chance of a brown cria (if Kateri passes on her brown gene, the brown will be exhibited and The Buccaneer's black gene will be it's secondary color). I have a feeling this cria is going to be a boy. I base this solely on the fact that Kateri is carrying this baby differently than she did last year. She had a girl last year. We found Sancha carried her girl different than a boy, but who knows, that may have been luck ;) I'm predicting a true black boy, but we'll see.

Exercise?

Who needs a gym membership or workout equipment at home? Not when you have a farm. There are always big chores to do that will work you out like no workout can. This weekend has given me a workout like no other.

This weekend our big project was starting our garden. We had already ordered seeds and seedlings that we had started in pots. When we put up the fence in our backyard, we sectioned off a big part for a garden. We are new to gardens, so it will be an adventure how this turns out.

We are growing: several kinds of tomatoes, peppers, watermelon, cucumber, summer squash, cantaloupe, pumpkin, beans, snow peas, sweet corn, and herbs (garlic, chives, coriander, sweet basil, rosemary). J also got some concord grapes but I fear they did not make the transplant.

Our weekend chores started with J raking and mowing the garden section. Because I'm not fond of machines, I did the poop moving. Alpaca poop is the best fertilizer. I've heard people rave about it, and we've seen the miracles it can do. We've managed to grow grass on pure sand soil. Put down alpaca poop and work it into the ground a bit, add some grass seeds, cover with straw, water everyday = grass. We decided we needed this miracle fertilizer for our garden. One problem, it's in a pile about .12 miles away. A little far to walk it in a wheel barrow, but not quite far enough to justify renting a front loader. Last year (I know I blogged about this), Emma and I took buckets and filled the back of the truck with the poop and moved it back by our house. It worked, but was a lot of hard labor. J suggested this year we use the trailer and he set up a ramp so that I could wheel a wheel barrow right into the trailer. No reaching up dumping buckets, though, still quite a bit of intense labor.

On Saturday we got a late start and I had to get other chores done, so I only managed to get 1 load of poop (I think about 8 wheelbarrows full). On Sunday I did 2 trips, each with 9 or 10 wheelbarrows full of poop. I collected the poop up at the poop pile, hauled it back to our place in the trailer, and then put it in a wheelbarrow again and spread it on our garden.

Now some might hear this and be a bit grossed out. I know, it is poop. But, of the poop that I've run across, alpaca poop is the least offensive. Bunny poop is a very close second. The benefit being that alpacas (and rabbits) only eat veggies, no meat. Their poop has little to no scent. If there is a scent, it's usually because it's fresh and urine is mixed in, or it is composting and there are scents to various stages of composting. Another nice thing about alpaca poop is that it's in little beans, sort of likeraisins , small and compact, easy to work with. Since they are this awesome fertilizer, I like to call them composting alpaca miracle beans. That sounds so much better than poop.

Other issues with poop are around spreading infection/germs. I'm not a scientist but my understanding is that this is not a risk to us from alpaca poop. Especially poop that has been sitting and composting for a couple (or more) months. Also, some animal poop is so strong that it can burn plants if it doesn't have time to compost. This is not a problem with alpaca poop. It can be used fresh from the poop piles in the pasture (we have done it).

While I was moving miracle beans, J not only mowed down what was growing, but then rented a rototiller to till up the ground. We live on very sandy soil. If you peel back the layer of woods on top, you have pure beach sand. So we are going to put a very big layer of composting alpaca miracle beans onto our garden area. J spread and worked these miracle beans into the soil.

It's Monday and we got about 1/2 of the garden covered in miracle beans. It's enough we can plant what we absolutely have to plant. But I foresee more miracle bean moving in our future.

Fiber Update

First, we have new bags of fiber from this years shearing. Since we still have last years and some from the year before, we have plenty to sell. I'd offer to skirt it, but I'm terrible at skirting, though I will do my best and will wash it. Our cria fleeces (the softest fleece) come in white (Lightning), fading fawn (Tehya) and brown (Shelby's). Other fleeces we have: white, various shades of brown (from a reddish brown to a golden brown), black and gray (light silver gray). Email us if you are interested in fleeces. It can be spun from raw or sent to the mill to be made into rovings or yarn.

I've started a "fiber room" in our basement, where the new fleeces are now residing. I still need to sort the fleeces from years previous and get them in there too. I have a *new* to me sewing machine (ok, it's a 1963 model, but it was given extra care by my grandma until it came to our house). And all my spinning gadgets are in there - with the exception of my spinning wheel which continues to be kept on top of the TV (so no dog can decide to do something to it) and where I can get it easily when I have some time to spin.

I'm almost done spinning Tucker's fiber from last year (our silver gray alpaca). I alternated between spinning the fiber and knitting. There are times I can't spin (like sitting at a child's baseball practice) when I would knit. But I managed to find enough time to spin to supply enough yarn to keep up with my knitting. I am over half way done with my sweater out of Tucker's fiber. I have the back of it complete and am almost done with the front left side. It's my first spun yarn and it's my first sweater so it will definitely have an artist look, but I'm excited to have a product from our own animals.

My next project is going to be a handbag. I promised one to my mom (past present). She picked brown for the color, so now for me to decide which shade - reddish brown of Victoria or the golden brown of Kateri? I've never made a handbag before so this is also new teritory.

Birth Day Pictures

Our newborn Snow Lily and her mom, Sancha. J found Snow Lily already walking and drinking off mom. We missed the birth, though it appears it was not a difficult one. Welcome to our farm, Snow Lily!







Mom and baby out walking around, Lily already can run! Notice our other two moms not to far away (both are brown):



Here are pictures of just Lily (though mom can be seen lingering in the background).



Sancha is a good dotting mom. When Lightning Bugs was born, we had to assist due to a dystocia. Sancha let us help and let us tend to him after the birth. This time, she did it all on her own and does not want us near her baby. When we weighed her, she stood by screaming the entire time. Baby and mom appear to have a good bond.