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.
Showing posts with label alpaca. Show all posts
Showing posts with label alpaca. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Monday, October 26, 2009
My husband rocks!!
If you haven't checked us out, you must go and see what my husband has done. He's made our website and he has done a FABULOUS job! Our address is www.shadysidealpacas.com and it just amazes me the things he can do with a computer.
He has all the pages put in and something on every page, now I realize that this seems like how a website should be, but that is what you pay a company to do, not what you do yourself at home! There are pictures of our girls with our alpacas and our mission statement as well as a farm history even! I love it and I can't wait til we get more visitors so that they can leave us messages to let us know what they think.
Alpacas are truly changing our lives. And only for the better.
He has all the pages put in and something on every page, now I realize that this seems like how a website should be, but that is what you pay a company to do, not what you do yourself at home! There are pictures of our girls with our alpacas and our mission statement as well as a farm history even! I love it and I can't wait til we get more visitors so that they can leave us messages to let us know what they think.
Alpacas are truly changing our lives. And only for the better.
Monday, April 6, 2009
Did anyone order an alpaca flip?
Well it's all over but the crying. We came, we saw but we failed to place. Our boys are all white, which is a very very tough class to be in. We had over 60 alpacas in that class alone. Though we didn't win anything our spirits are not broken but we do have to decide how to move forward from here.
There are the pending questions of shows, processing fleece for shows, or processing fleece for product/money. The more distant future will have us doing more shows for sure as we feel all of our animals should improve over the next year or we are hoping so. If we had fleece issues I think we'd be a bit less hopeful but as luck would have it we have certain issue areas with each that can improve over the next year of growth. Our oldest boy is a bit off in conformation and though he got a 2nd look but the judge, when she viewed his profile again, she then moved on. Our middle boy has a great blanket, but he is very undersized for his age. Both of these issues may be fixed as the boys age and grow. The youngest boy, who also got a great comment from the judge on the softness of his fleece, is lacking density. This is the least likely one to be fixed over time but I have heard of changes over age and after shearing so we are hopeful on him as well.
My wife and I will be sitting down to decide on our short term direction and then working to implement that plan. I think she prefers to show them at nationals, but I'm more of the opinion of shearing them and trying to show the blankets. The later one is great because you get back hard numbers on the qualities of the alpaca’s fur.
Oh and before I forget, my title is not without substance... We have 3 very well behaved boys. They are normally very easy to walk to get to stand and just about anything else. I do want to say that Alexander and Ashley were a dream out there. He was very well behaved and we could not have asked for much more out of him as far as how he handled the show. Ashley seemed to be able to do what was needed without any issues. The other 2 boys, well that is an alpaca of a different color. Both Odyssey and Coronado were a bit harder to handle once they were split up from each other. Neither of the younger 2 alpacas seemed to handle being around other alpacas very well. Odyssey is very small and always seems a bit off when around alpacas he does not know and it showed. Alli struggled with him a lot though it was nothing she was doing. In the end, she did a good job of getting him up at the right time and showing the teeth as she was to do. She handled it very well and will do well in shows in the future. Coronado was the most interesting though I guess we probably should have seen this coming. He has always been the follower. Though he loves Haleigh, once split from the other two his normally cooperative self changed into the little alpaca that couldn't. Though it was very hard on Haleigh, she kept things together enough to let the judge get a good look at him and did what she needed to do. As noted by the title our show ended on an odd note as Coronado did a forward roll almost out of the ring. It was funny but a frustrating end for both Haleigh and our farm. Luckily for us, we have learned many thing we need to work on and will strive to have a better showing our next opportunity.
There are the pending questions of shows, processing fleece for shows, or processing fleece for product/money. The more distant future will have us doing more shows for sure as we feel all of our animals should improve over the next year or we are hoping so. If we had fleece issues I think we'd be a bit less hopeful but as luck would have it we have certain issue areas with each that can improve over the next year of growth. Our oldest boy is a bit off in conformation and though he got a 2nd look but the judge, when she viewed his profile again, she then moved on. Our middle boy has a great blanket, but he is very undersized for his age. Both of these issues may be fixed as the boys age and grow. The youngest boy, who also got a great comment from the judge on the softness of his fleece, is lacking density. This is the least likely one to be fixed over time but I have heard of changes over age and after shearing so we are hopeful on him as well.
My wife and I will be sitting down to decide on our short term direction and then working to implement that plan. I think she prefers to show them at nationals, but I'm more of the opinion of shearing them and trying to show the blankets. The later one is great because you get back hard numbers on the qualities of the alpaca’s fur.
Oh and before I forget, my title is not without substance... We have 3 very well behaved boys. They are normally very easy to walk to get to stand and just about anything else. I do want to say that Alexander and Ashley were a dream out there. He was very well behaved and we could not have asked for much more out of him as far as how he handled the show. Ashley seemed to be able to do what was needed without any issues. The other 2 boys, well that is an alpaca of a different color. Both Odyssey and Coronado were a bit harder to handle once they were split up from each other. Neither of the younger 2 alpacas seemed to handle being around other alpacas very well. Odyssey is very small and always seems a bit off when around alpacas he does not know and it showed. Alli struggled with him a lot though it was nothing she was doing. In the end, she did a good job of getting him up at the right time and showing the teeth as she was to do. She handled it very well and will do well in shows in the future. Coronado was the most interesting though I guess we probably should have seen this coming. He has always been the follower. Though he loves Haleigh, once split from the other two his normally cooperative self changed into the little alpaca that couldn't. Though it was very hard on Haleigh, she kept things together enough to let the judge get a good look at him and did what she needed to do. As noted by the title our show ended on an odd note as Coronado did a forward roll almost out of the ring. It was funny but a frustrating end for both Haleigh and our farm. Luckily for us, we have learned many thing we need to work on and will strive to have a better showing our next opportunity.
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