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.

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 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.

A quick note on the past weekend!

Hopefully anyone that reads this spent a little time visiting alpaca farms over the past weekend. This is the largest event put on by AOBA that I know of and the best chance people can really have to learn about the alpaca lifestyle.

We did make if over to one larger farm in our area and learned a little about spinning and needle felting. We have been wanting to do some felting and purchased a needle felting kit from someone at the farm doing the demonstrations.

If you did not get out to other farms and are still looking to learn about alpacas do not give up. Most of the farms are more than willing to meet with you and talk with you. There is also a large online community. One of those gathering places is Alpaca Nation where there is lots of information, especially in the forum area. There are many other places to get information though so if you need more information or can't find what you are looking for do a little hunting and you should find what you wanted to know.

The day is finally here!

Well we had another long day yesterday. Though we did not show a single animal, we spent lots of time watching our friends in various events. We also went to all the shops and stalls to meet people and learn more about the industry. It's obvious that there is lots we just do not know.

The alpacas are odd in that we had to spend some time yesterday cleaning them up just a bit. Mainly just removing droppings that are not supposed to be on them. They keep laying right in the stuff they put on the floor making us do that over and over again. I'd think they would quit doing that since they hate getting cleaned off.

Well we are all a bit tired, but ready for today. Wish us luck in our first showing! Oh, we did catch a huge break, none of our boys are in the same groupings so they do not have to immediately compete against eachother. In the even that we get any 1st or 2nds then we have a chance they could meet up in the color champion round.

Off to the show!

Welcome to our adventure.

Please stop bye and read about our adventure of bringing alpacas in to our farm. We have learned much and would like to share our experiences with everyone out there.

I would first like to thank Lands End Alpacas for taking the time to work through all the details of the contracts to get us lined up with our 3 boys Alexander, Coronado and Oddyssey.

I would like to send my congratulations to Willow Ridge Farm for the 2 blue ribbons they won over the weekend at the Ohio Alpacafest. This will be our short term boarding location once we bring our alpacas closer to home.