one boy one girl

Fate had apparently decided I didn’t have enough on my plate yesterday. Molly delivered her cria in the morning. It was a text book delivery. Dot arrived just in time to see the cria hit the ground. She called me at work to give me the news and I called Laurel to let her know her herd had grown by one, a little brown girl.

Then Dot called me back to tell me Inara was now delivering. This was a surprise; Inara wasn’t due for another three weeks or more. After an hour Dot called me back to tell me that we had a head, but there was no further progress. Fearing a dystocia, I gave any pretense of getting anything accomplished and headed home, leaving a message for Linda (our vet) as I walked out the door.

Linda called me back just as I got to the barn. I confirmed the dystocia with her. Thank goodness for Linda, as she was a nice calm voice on the phone talking me through what I had to do. Alpacas, like other livestock, deliver their babies front feet first with the head and neck laying in between. Well our little guy had his legs back and twisted around each other. Once I located the legs, I had to untwist them and then attempt to bring them forward. The first leg actually came out fairly quickly, though it felt like I was in there twisting and pulling and pushing for days. The second leg took a bit longer. I remember, on the verge of panic, saying to Linda that I thought she had said the second leg was easier and her reply of “No, I said your half way there. Don’t get frustrated, you’re doing fine”. There is not a lot of room to work in there and I swear his leg was getting longer with every passing minute. Linda suggested trying to push him back in a bit to get some more room.
Seriously?
You do realize that Inara is doing her damndest to squeeze him out? And you want me to stick him back in there???
Ok, I’ll keep trying. A few minutes more and I had given up trying to straighten to leg and simply folded it nice and flat and eased him out.

Success!

The little guy was up and nursing within the hour, no worse for his untimely arrival. He looks like he’ll be a true black. Now we have to come up with some names. I don’t know, but all I can think of when I see our little guy is “early”.

So we managed to finish up baby watch in one fell swoop. I suppose it’s nice that I don’t have to worry about anybody delivering while I’m away at a show, but I still could have done with slightly less excitement.

off and running

Three events down two too go. We’re in the home stretch! Sort of.
We spent an afternoon at a local school with a couple of the boys. That was quite pleasant. Then there was Pat’s open house at JMS Alpacas. This past weekend was the annual Christmas boutique at Kathleen’s
The Boutique at Singletree Farm in Chino Valley was a big success. It was great to see familiar faces coming back to visit with the alpacas. Some of the visitors where having a brag session, telling each other how many years in row they had been coming out. Saturday the weather was perfect, Sunday I woke up to see snow falling. It was quite pretty, I haven’t seen snow in quite a while, but after a couple of hours in the blowing wind, the novelty had worn off and I camped out in front of the heater. Not that I’m a wimp or anything.
This weekend is the open house at our place, looks like we’ll be in the low 70’s. I can live with that.
We’ll finish off next weekend at the Mesa Art Show. After that I’ll have to get my butt in gear and do some Christmas shopping. It’s more exciting when you leave to the last minute. Really.
As for the critters, Molly is still holding out on giving birth. Her due date is actually this weekend (which would make for an interesting show at the open house) but her previous own told us she tends to drop her crias early so we’re keeping an eye on her.
We got the results back for the blood panel we did on Jack. He has a staph infection. Staphylococcus xylosus, to be specific. Good news is it is easily treatable with a verity of medications, so we just need to decide on what would be most efficient (the Naxel we had him on is actually not on the list of treatments for this form of staph, which may be why it keeps coming back) and hopefully take care of this thing once and for all! As of this morning he was feeling quite good. In fact he was being a pain in the a**. He was jumping and playing with everyone, they were trying to avoid him and eat their breakfast. I expect when I get home he’ll have a new coating of green slime all over him. But it is nice to see him feeling good for now.
Ok, that’s it for now, I’m off to felt more soaps. Ta!

Just catching up

It’s been a busy couple of weeks for us and we’re just getting started. The Southwest Fiber Festival and the Tucson Wool Festival are behind us. We’ve a fairly quite weekend this weekend with just a field trip for Jack and Cartigan to a local schools open house. The next four weekends are back to back events. It starts with an open house at JMS Alpacas another local breeder, then I’m heading up to Chino Valley for the annual Christmas Boutique at Singletree Farm. The following weekend is our open house, and we finish off with the Mesa Art Festival.
The weekend after that I plan to be recovering from exhaustion!
We rearranged the boys about a week ago. Cartigan was long overdue for weaning so he had to move. I took the opportunity to mix all the boys up. Luarel’s two (boarders) and Hielo and Adama moved in with the big boys. Mickey and Niska, even though they are older moved in with the little boys and Cartigan. Instead of having males separated by age, we have them more or less separated by size. It went with far less fireworks than I had anticipated.
In fact I was bragging to a friend about how smoothly it had all been and, of course, karma was listening. I heard a commotion in the middle of the night and headed out to find Niska squashing poor Cartigan. I pulled him off, but he was in rare form and wouldn’t back off. I finally ended up chasing him through a gate and closing it behind him. I ended up with Niska, Sunny and Spats on one side and Cartigan, Jack and Mickey on the other. Then I went back to bed.
That lasted for a couple of hours, when Niska decided Spats would be fun to jump on. Problem is Spats is a screamer and our bedroom window is thirty feet away from where they were. I spent some time out in the 30 odd degree night dressed in a tee shirt and paddock boots fruitlessly trying to get Niska to calm down. I finally just said have at it and closed the bedroom window. They appear to have worked out their differences for now. I’m kind of tired.
We also had a bit of an adventure with the dogs. Somebody knocked over the can of dog food (Dot had just added a 20 pound bag of food), and the pups had an early thanksgiving. Big Daisy and Molly ate their fill and left, but JJ and Little Daisy ate until they could hold no more. Little Daisy literally waddled when she walked, her distended belly practically hitting the ground. JJ was even worse off. Poor guy just sprawled on the floor looking completely miserable. You could practically feel kibbles pushing through his skin. We probably won’t have to feed him for the rest of the month!
Other than that things have been going well. I’ve been busy making felted soaps, just can’t keep up with demand! I’ve done a little work with the spinning wheel, but not much lately and I won’t see my loom again until after Christmas. Ah well, it’s a good thing to be busy!

Pink Dad

It was a beautiful weekend. We’re getting into the time of year when we get to call all our friends and family across the country and brag about the fact that we’re out working on our gardens and sipping ice tea while they are bracing for freeze warnings and dragging out the winter coats.

The honeysuckle is just a mass of orange flowers,
and our wild sunflower is in full glory. Unfortunately, I found out the sunflower was doing so well because the hose had accidentally been left on for only god knows how long and it was responding to the large quantity of water. I’m so not going to enjoy the next water bill, but I am enjoying the display of color







My sister participated in the Susan Komen 3 Day Walk, in Philadelphia this past weekend. Through a series of events last winter, my father was, um, persuaded to dress in costume to cheer her on. She got to pick the costume. I will never think of tutus in the same way…

http://www.courierpostonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/gallery?Avis=BZ&Dato=20101017&Kategori=NEWS01&Lopenr=10170802&Ref=PH (photos 33-37 are my Dad and his buddy Cliff)

Brain wants to blow up the photo and hang it in the spare bedroom so that Dad will always remember that weekend. Brian is just really thoughtful that way!

I got to sit at the loom for a little while and finished up a rug I've been working on. All I need to do now is sew the ends back in and call it good..


We had a visit on Sunday, which made the alpacas very happy as they snacked on a bucket of carrots. All and all a relaxing weekend.

life goes on.

Finally, things are calming down again. Everybody is on the road to recovery. Nadia, as it turns out had scratched her eye. The cloudiness is now gone. Cartigan is doing much better. He still has a bit of a limp, but he is using the leg pretty regularly now, it will just take time to heal completely.
We’re working on a new theory with Jack. Another breeder asked about the possibility of a reoccurring abscess. It made sense. We may have been knocking an infection down with medication, but not knocking it out. He is now on penicillin long term, much to his dismay. Normally we would keep him on 10 days. Now we’re looking at a minimum of 20 days and possibly up to 4-6 weeks. He really hates the shots and does his damnedest to spit at me and kick me when I go to give it to him. But true to his sweet nature, if I don’t have a needle in my hand, he still wants his treats and kisses.

May your life be interesting

Life had been rather dull around here. Which, in my mind, is not a bad thing. That all came to a screeching halt this week. To start with, we got our hay. Very good news, since we were out and working on borrowed bales. However, Mother Nature seem to think this was a sign to finally send rain. And wind. Everyday. Things are a bit damp out here but we missed the worse of Arizona’s weather as Flagstaff had four tornados touch down yesterday.
Sometime during the last round of storms to hit our area, Cartigan managed to injure one of his front legs. We checked him out and didn’t see any obvious signs of trauma, nor could I feel any swelling, heat or break. As best I could tell the pain was in his ankle area, probably a good sprain. We wrapped his leg in an ace bandage to help give him some extra support and he will now walk around slowly on it. Any faster speeds and he pulls it up and hops around on three legs. At this point all we can really do is try to support the leg as much as possible, try to keep him from jumping around and let time heal the injury.
Mean while, Nadia has developed a cloudy eye. Again, no obvious sign of injury and she is an older girl so this may be just a sign of old age. We flush it with saline daily. Next time Linda is out, I’ll have her take a look, but at the moment, it seems to be bothering me more than it is bothering Nadia.
The latest is Jack is having another one of his fever episodes this morning. As cool as it was yesterday I doubt it has anything to do with overheating. More than likely there is some other underlying chronic condition and we’ll just have to deal with this periodically for the rest of his life.
I’m beginning to understand why the Irish think the most powerful curse you can say to someone is “may your life be interesting…”

Fall Festival 2010

The Fall Festival in Pinetop is behind us now. It went ok. It was quieter than last year; I guess the economy is still keeping people away. We still had a great time and did well for sales. It was nice to get out of the heat for a while.
A small farmers market that we had scheduled for this weekend was canceled because of the lack of participation, another sad note on the economy. Oh well, I could do with the rest.
We finally got a break in the heat. This week ahead is forecasted to be in the 80’s. It feels good to walk outside and not get slapped in the face by 105 degrees. The alpacas are enjoying the coolness as well. They are finally venturing away from the fans and coolers. Of course the drop in temperature has been accompanied by rain. I wouldn’t normally complain, we love rain, but we just got a load of hay and haven’t moved under the cover yet. There are tarps over it, but the bales still get damp, so we’ll need to uncover the stack and let everything dry out, and then restack it. Yippee.