Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Weighing, Worming, and Knitting

This morning Beth, John (Beth's son), and I finished weighing and worming the alpacas. They are rather stoic critters and sometimes the only way that you can find health problems is noticing a weight loss.....or if some management is needed. Like these two girls below, brown Sonata and black Chinella are in need of weight stabilization. Chinny will no longer have access to the baby pen for constant access to hay. This picture is proof that these two DO enjoy eating. If you look behind us, everyone else is running to the fence because they spotted a fox crossing the bean field. Not these two....

After we finished our weighing and worming, we came up to the house to prepare Chin's fleece for the show in September. We spread it out and removed lots of VM (vegetable matter) and anything that wasn't consistent with her blanket. Every little fleck of "stuff" shows up on the black and we finally just quit after an hour. Beth was actually using tweezers. We did leave some junk behind. The fleece of huacaya alpacas is folded so that the cut side is on the outside and then put into a plastic bag until the show.



I want to show you this cute hat that I just finished. (That's Beth's horse, Cord, in the background) The pattern was free from SmokyMountainFibers on Etsy. AnnMarie and I are sort of old friends over there.....and we have been following each others blog for it seems like forever. You can get the pattern on her blog for yourself. Her blog is: Here

7 comments:

Meg said...

Hehe... I didn't know alpacas could have overeating problems!

RC said...

wow, who knew?
love the hat!

AnneMarie said...

Nice Hat! I think this is going to be a good one for using up bits and pieces! The purl row helps hide the stripe jog too. Pretty Clever, eh?

Say hi to the alpacas for me. We can all have eating issues!

ooglebloops said...

Love the hat!!!! Have you read Linda Bylsma's blog Fiber Fabrications? She also raises alpacas- her link is on my blog.

Mare said...

What a sweet hat! And the alpacas look great!

Michele / akkasha said...

I am glad you were able to find the weight gains so it won't get to be a problem later on. I know all too well how they feel. *grin*

I am sure all the VM shows up in Chin fleece. I hope you are able to get the majority of it out for the show.

And cute hat!

critter Lover said...

In addition to good animal management, Maple is also a FANTASTIC record keeper! Thank you Maple! I like the "hands on" veterinary/ health stuff much more, so feel fortunate that Maple keeps it all SO WELL documented! Healthy animals are Happy animals! Nice job on the hat! And nice to see Cord doing what he does best back there in the background! Hee Hee!

Beth

Map