Saturday, April 7, 2007

Easter is Tomorrow


This is a picture of Ariana with her last cria, Orion. Orion is the little guy that we weaned last month. Our vet, Russ, sent the blood that he drew from her to Michigan State to be checked. The progesterone count came back at 1. That means that she is either pregnant - or not. Guess we will wait until Aldie (the visiting stud) comes here and see if she refuses him.


Yesterday we weighed the boy alpacas and this morning we weighed the girls. Because alpacas are so stoic and rarely let you know what might be wrong, a monthly weight check assures us that all is well. Of course, this time of the year, we figure 5 to 10 pounds is fleece. While we have them out, we also check and trim their toes if necessary. My job is to hold and Smitty does the trimming. We never know who is going to be nice and who doesn't think it's a good idea for that day. Ah, Boris, Sonata, and Celeste will need to be finished tomorrow.

Daughter Terre and I had a wonderful time visiting son, Rob, in Pennsylvania. This is a picture of him in one of his labs at Scranton. He is showing us birds that some of his students had stuffed. Is so hard for me to think of him as Dr. Smith. Hopefully, he will be able to come home for a while this summer.
I had totally forgotten how mountainous and beautiful Pennsylvania is. My biggest joy was looking down into the green valleys at the beautiful farms.

I'm convinced now that spinning has become an addiction for me. Within 20 minutes of getting home, I was on my wheel. Spun up a really nice combination of three alpacas and a Shetland sheep. One of the alpacas, Weatherby, is a little white, very friendly Suri. Suris have long silk like locks unlike the fuzzy, crimpy Huacayas.



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