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!

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 choking alpaca!

Well we've found that alpacas are grain eating maniacs for sure. They act as though they have never had anything to eat when we get it out. They are very funny and it is the easiest time to get them close enough to you to do other things.

However, it is good to always take caution when feeding grain to them. Make sure someone is there watching them until it is completely gone and they are finished chewing and swallowing it. My wife had to deal with this for 30-60 minutes just last evening and there is only one thing I can think of worse than being remote and worried on how things are going and that is dealing with it! My wife had a real work out and got several kicks and stomps while trying to help.

In the end she did a great job. The alpaca seems no worse considering the whole ordeal. If anyone reads this and has ideas on how to keep from having grain get stuck I would appreciate the feedback. We have thought maybe we need to keep grain up off the ground but with our current set up this is where we feed them.

Oh and on a fun note, I made a temporary extension of the pen last night so the boys have a small area of new grass to mow. They really seemed to appreciate it but didn't think there was enough room or grass for them all to be there.

What a community...

I wanted to thank all the people in the Alpaca community that have helped us so far in determining many many things. They range from who we bought from, boarded with, shearing and advice on fencing, scales, meds, flies, care, skirting and more.

A big thanks to Windswept Farms Alpacas for a good couple Saturdays where we got our hands on several animals, learned/practiced herd health, got advice and learned a lot about skirting and processing our fleece.

I also want to send my thanks out Willow Ridge for the continued help with supplies and information as we try to get up to speed.