Tuesday, December 9, 2008

Year end rush

Whew! It feels like we’ve been going non-stop since October. Hmm, probably because we have.
Things started to get really crazy right after Jacko was born. Unfortunately, he got very ill and we nearly lost him. Our vet diagnosed septicemia, a very dangerous blood infection. The poor little guy must have felt like a pin cushion as we threw an army of medication at him.
He was diagnosed on a Wednesday and I had to leave Friday for Alpacafest west. I truly feared that he would not be here when I got home and wanted to cancel the trip and stay with him. My mother-in-law, Dot, really came through, she took over Jacko’s care and up-dated me every day on his progress while I was gone. He responded so well, that I actually got to relax and enjoy myself in L.A.
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A shawl that I entered in their fiber arts contest won first place, and Aries came home with a third place ribbon in his class

Not only did Jacko survive the weekend, he looked 1000 times improved on Monday.
Then Tuesday came. I found Jacko in the morning limp and unresponsive. We ran him back to the vets where he was transfused. He had developed acute diarrhea and it was taking its toll on him. Again Dot came through. While I went off to work, she was over every hour and a half making sure Jacko got fed and received additional fluids, meds, anything we could think of. Then I took over for early morning and late night feedings. It was touch and go for a good week, then he slowly began to make progress.
Now he’s a bouncing happy cria, a bit small for his age, but making up ground quickly. We still have to bottle feed him, and I think it may be a permanent situation (well for the next four and a half months or so, anyway), but we have no doubts that he will grow into a big stapping male.

Dot took over feeding every time I left town, which seemed to happen often these past two months. One trip was up to Singletree Alpacas for their annual Christmas Boutique. It’s always great to see all my friends up there
and I look forward to this trip every year as a “girls” weekend. We work our butts off, but its well worth the effort.


Then we had our second annual open house down at our place. It was huge success, with easily twice as many people coming out as last year. Some driving way cool rods (Lloyd, you show-off!)
Hopefully it will only keep growing. Many thanks to all me “peeps” that came out to help make it the success it was.
Now maybe I can take a deep breath, relax and get back to my loom!

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I would like to know where your farm is? I spend the winters at the SKP co-op on Montgomery Rd, one mile from I-8. Montgomerry rd is at the yellow gin off US 84. We are 2 miles down.
I spin and love to spin alpaca. I noticed your open house, but to late, in Ravelry.
Do you sell fiber?

Unknown said...

I forgot to leave my e-mail address.
foursally@gmail.com
Marian