Summer season is good and bad...

Well, the slower part of the season for shows is coming to an end. In a little over a month the shows are going to be kicking in again. At this point in time it does not look likely that we will be able to do much as far as shows go. Who knows as some times things can change in a moment though.

We have had the tale of 2 summers this year at our farm. The rainy season which helped our smaller sized pens keep up and the dry/hot season that showed us why having a larger pen set up is needed. In any caes the boys have been kept cool with 24 hour fans, some spray downs and lots of available water.

I did want to thank Raging River alpacas, who stopped over at our farm a month or so ago. We were able to have some nice discussions and learn a lot in our short visit. We also were very happy with some of the processing they are helping us with as well as direction for some larger processing we are looking to do.

That's is it from here for now. We still have great asperations for growth and the alpaca industry.

Glad things will slow for a moment.

Well after an event full spring with shows, new animals, new pens and so on I'm glad to be settling into the summer months. We have lots to consider and still want one more boy for our upcoming fall show season. We are very hopeful one of our boys we've been looking at will take off now that he's been split from mom.

We have had a fair show season and ended up with several ribbons at the IAI and the nationals show. If I have it right in my mind, we had one 1st and two seconds at IAI and one 1st, one 2nd and a 5th at nationals. All of which would not have been possible without my daughters hard work and time spent. They really do well with this and enjoy and deserve the occasional success. The best is hopefully yet to come.

Wow are the deals on alpacas just becoming crazy! We have seen great prices and unique plans and financing come up over the past few months. My opinion is that anyone interested should be looking now to get in. Especially if you are in a position to purchase females. I suppose prices could continue to fall but unless there is a total collapse I don't know how they could come down much more. I'm sure some unique financing and additional perks could still be tossed in but IMHO, it's a great time to be adding to or building a herd.

Other than adding 1 more boy we don't have a lot of plans for our farm at the moment. We'd love to add some females but we do not have the buildings to support such a venture and tossing in boarding costs with payments is not in the budget ATM. We have seen some very nice animals too that we'd love to pick up. We might put up another pen, but it would have no building or power so it will be a temporary, nice weather only option for now. It's a nice acre area that has lots of great growth perfect for some hungry boys!

Nationals Time!

Well, this is going to be our farms first nationals and we have high expectations. Considering our latest additions and positioning we are hopeful to have at least a couple placements. For a new farm with a low budget at this big of show, we'll be happy with that.

A huge thanks to my wife who almost did an entire show fleece top to bottom, front to back by herself part of Saturday, to get it ready for this upcoming weekend.

A big thanks to Kevin and Lisa Crick who sheared some of our boys a couple weeks ago. They look great and seem much happier than when they were giant bundles of fleece.

Also, my thanks to 4k who is still helping us learn how to prepare and show our first suri. We are a bit lost on the whats and hows still.

Lastly I wanted to post what a great help the kids have been in keeping the animals areas clean, food and water filled and working with the animals on occassion to prepare them for the upcoming show. There is always more than could be done and more time needed but we all only have so much time in a day.

So, this will be our last post for sure until after nationals. I would like to wish anyone reading this going, best of luck. Wish a little too as we are likely to need it.

Look us up on Thursday helping at fleece check in and possibly doing other things once we've settled our boys in.

It's finally starting to look like a real pasture!

I have to say thanks to my wonderful hubby for all the hard work he has put into getting our barn ready for our newest boys. He spent almost every night and all day on weekends for the past few weeks expanding our pasture area by putting up fence and putting in another pen so that we can actually have enough room for more alpacas...which will be coming home this weekend!

He even used an idea given to him by 4K Alpacas and built a brand new hay dispenser for the boys to eat from. While the boys were much more eager to get to the grass on the new side, they did take time to stop and nibble out of the new dispenser.

Everyone is looking forward to getting Jupiter and Elijah home. Elijah is our first Suri, it's going to be fun learning about the differences between Huacaya and Suri's. We were really hoping that we would be able to get all three of our new alpacas home, but Cyclone, another Suri, is just not ready to leave his mommy yet. This also means that we will not be able to show Cyclone at the National show in May, but hopefully he will grow enough that we can get him home and training for some fall shows.

A great weekend but some memories lost!

Well, we had a great weekend at the show. We had our first ribbons at a show ever and we are hoping that it is just a start. When you buy an alpaca at 6 months or earlier it's not always easy to tell how that animal will turn out. The dam and sire are about the only things you have to go on as well as possibly full or half siblings. By the end of the weekend we ended up with a 1st and 2 2nd place ribbons.

In a sad event, something happened to our memory card on our camera and we ended up not being able to save half of our pictures from the weekend. We are very bothered by this as we had some great pictures of our girls that we'll never be able to print or look at later. Digital is nice and all but obviously has it's issues too.

Well, it's been a rough weekend so I'm back to recovery.

IAI, Nationals, Elijah and a sponsor to boot!

First I'd like to thank my parents for taking interest in and helping to foster my daughters hobby of showing alpacas. We are very happy that they are going to be a major sponsor for the national show in Fort Wayne! This is going to allow us to have our largest presence ever at a show.

I'd like to welcome out newest alpaca, Elijah, to the herd. He makes our 5th and first suri. We had a great visit with Sandy and Mike over the weekend and after a great day came to an agreement on Elijah. We do have a picture on our website of him and will add more of him and all our boys over the next few weeks.

We are looking forward to the IAI show as well as the upcoming national show. We are hoping for great things from our new boys but no matter the outcome are very happy with how we are progressing and learning. It's going to be interesting to learn about suri's and also having some color around.

The trailer and Fort Wayne Show...

Hey we have wheels... More specfically a trailer! We were able to purchase a horse trailer and conver the in side to open it up for alpacas. We can only firt 3 to 4 in at one time but this should work out pretty well for us for now. It is better than no trailer at all. Especially considering our show next week and then the trips we have to make to pick up our new animals later this spring.


So this is our new trailer from the side. It has the ability to be fully closed up. Storage in the front and on the side. Newer wood floors and was recently sandblasted and painted. The green and white fits our color scheme perfectly.

Converting the trailer for alpacas from horses only took about 1 to 1.5 hours. This was somewhat by luck but also longer than others may take. The center divider was not removable and so it had to be removed by force. I was able to either remove or cut all the screws and bolts holding it in. I also was able to use a hacksaw to remove many metal left over parts. The main board was wood and a jig saw made short work of it. We used a pad that was there from before to cover the support post at the doors cleaned it up and have already used it.

Anyway, I hope to see and meet others at the show in Fort Wayne next week but figure it will be smaller since Nationals is in Fort Wayne in another month and a half and shows have been hit hard by the economy anyway.

Another great visit!

I'd like to thank 4K Alpacas for taking some time with us on Sunday to really help educate us on suris. It was enlightening for sure and a great help to us in helping to make our selections.

I was amazed to find that a colored suri generally had a huacaya in the background somewhere to help bring the colors into the suri line. This explains a bit more to me why there is a possible huacaya with suris. I also learned that the full face/full beard look that is so popular is something that is generally temporary in all alpacas. This really helped me to understand why almost every sire and dam I looked at did not have these traits but the offspring did.

We’ve been hearing lots of use of A and E to help with development of the bones in young alpacas. I would do a bit more research to see exactly what makes sense for treatment but it seems to be something that is given to help with weak front knees.

Oh, one other thing is the use of MTG (normally noted for horses) for helping to get hair growth back where alpacas have had cuts, bug/fly issues and have rubbed it off. This seems to be a common practice but I’m not sure all smaller farms have heard it.

While we are not certain, we have kind of got our minds into getting 2 suri and 1 huacaya this batch. Of course, considering we already got our first boy purchased and he is a huacaya.

Anyway, I hope those little facts about alpacas are helpful to everyone else. I know that I found them to be very interesting.

So it's decision time!

Well we had a great weekend though it was lots of travel. Now the real work is about to begin. After several hundred miles of travel and looking at about 20 different boys we have decided on one boy but need to finalize 2 others.

I would like to thank all the farms we visited and worked with this past weekend. Every person/farm was very helpful and a great resource that we will use either this time around or I'm sure at some point in the future. My thanks again to Santa Claus Alpacas, Windswept Farms, Raging River Alpaca Farm, Once Upon A Farm Alpacas, Michel Century Farm and R'AlpacaLand LLC.

We have set our goals to purchase our boys with a much more hands on approach. We bought our first boys sight unseen and we are very happy with them as our first purchases but have learned a ton since then.

With that said I'd like to announce the addition of our 4th alpacas, Raging River Jupiter. He is a super ball of fleece already and we are happy to have added him to our farm for showing over the next couple years.

We will be making 2 more purchases this winter to add to our program. we just can't wait to have all our new boys picked out and moved to our home later this spring.

A great time had by all!

I would like to start off this post by thanking our hosts at Windswept Farms last weekend for a great event. Jack and Anita are great for the alpaca community in our area and have been a lot of help to us as we've continued to learn and grow. There is a link to thier farm below if you'd like to see when they have other events scheduled.

Our search for our new set of show boys continues on and we hope to visit many of our candidates this upcoming weekend. It's exciting to be thinking of doubling our size but there is much work to be done before this can happen.

In addition to that we are looking to aquire our first animal trailer. This has been no easy task, especially when watching your money flow. We've found a few fair candidates for us and hope that we'll be able to aquire a nice one before we add our new boys.

Oh, one last comment is it's very nice to see the boys growing and gaining weight. The really interesting part for me will be to check the weights of the boys after they are sheared! They are still growing so we like to see them gain weight between each herd health day but it's very hard to tell how much is fleece and how much is them growing up big and strong.

New Years Mush!

Well no matter the weather you have to keep up on heard health as we found out yesterday. We had to walk, dig and clean up around lots of very soft ground as part of our 6 week herd health weekend.

All turned out well though as we managed to get all the boys weight, wormed and a short walk around with the girls. Wow are they good for the girls!

I think I'm going to work with my brother in law on creating a top for on top of my scale though. The one that came with mine is a bit small for our largest boy. The smooth surface is horrible too.

Anyway, all well except the muddy/dirty legs of our alpacas!

The great alpacas search!

Well, for us it's a great search with many rules and things to follow. There are lots of questions to ask when doing this probably for every person at every farm. for us as non-breeders and male only it may be a little simpler but it does not appear to be much.

So our questions we are mulling through include do we venture into any suri alpacas? How much room do we have and how will it limit any future purchases? What are we willing to pay? Should we venture into colors since we have all white now? How do we make sure we have companions and the right group sizes to put the boys in? How much will the additions add to our costs for food and medications? How far are we willing to travel to get our new boys?

Well that seems like enough for us to mull over for now. We are debating the addtion of 2 or 3. We have 1 likely candidate and then 4 others we are reviewing closely. We'll keep you posted as we progress through the process.

The holiday is over!

Well it really never was a holiday with farm animals I guess. It was a good holiday season. Our boys got some new toys a bag of grain and a fairly fresh cut batch of hay. They do not complain much that is for sure.

The snow has not seemed to bother them to much except for the waste pile. They do not seem to like that white stuff on the ground so they have taken to using the barn which I am not very happy about at all. We are doing our best to clean it out a couple times a day and keep down fresh straw but it's a real struggle.

I have also found that I made a bit of a judgement call error when putting in gates. I put them together perfectly and very well cut to fit but this turns out to be a problem when the weather changes. The front gate is now hard to open and shut right due to snow and the inner gates are not opening all the way due to changing in the ground shape or possibly wood swell. Nothing that can't be fixed.

Our good news is that we've had a couple little breaks and might be able to add a couple boys this year. I hope to purchase the much needed equipment to add gutters to the barn as well as some new ground tiles. We also well be adding another new fenced pen and internal pen this year. We will likely talk about how to go about this so we like it though. My original thoughts are not postively going to stay the same after a year of working with it as we have it.