Husband has gone and done it. We are now not only alpaca shepherds, but also will be sheep shepherds. Yesterday we drove to Brooklyn, MI and put money down on a ewe (that's a girl) and a boy ( is that a buck? a ram? a gelding? - I have a whole new vocabulary to learn.) The little girl isn't weaned yet so we can't get her until the end of this month. He also called a farm in Ohio and spoke for 4 more there.
Credit for this charming picture goes to Amy Bidlack of Shepherd, MI. Amy is the lovely person who helped us get started in this new adventure. Visit her farm, The Bidlack Pasture


♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Breeding update
Hopefully the two girls here are bred. Ariana did another 20 minute breed with Alde this a.m. and Celeste did a little couple minutes with Pudge yesterday. We will spit test both of them in a couple of days. Spit test? We're not going to spit on them although my imagination is going wild creating a new pregnancy test. What we do is take the girl up to the stud and, supposedly, if she is, in fact, bred, she will run, or kick, or spit, or all of these to reject the male. I guess the old head ache plea won't work here.

Oh, my gosh, so much has happened since I last posted, I'm not sure where to begin. Will do this chronologically, I guess. Tuesday Mary and I drove to Hastings to pick up my roving. It's GORGEOUS! Thank you so much, Suzanne. I have been weighing and wrapping it to get ready to sell. Actually, I'm just loving getting my hands into it. Were eight bags, I think. These pictures are of my two favorites. The black is from Berringer and has blue silk in it. You can see by the skein above that I couldn't wait to spin up a couple ounces. It spins beautifully and almost wants to be lace weight. The lighter picture is white merino, gray alpaca, fawn alpaca, and hand dyed pink silk. It's yummy to handle and look at. Will see how it spins soon. I am listing batches in my Etsy store as I finish them.

Mary and I ran over to Nashville to have lunch with my bestest friend, Marianne. We visited her 3 dogs, 2 horses, 2 alpacas, 2 goats, and numerous chickens and ducks, and got a tour of her fabulous gardens. Marianne will be selling her awesome soap in our booth at Allegan's Michigan Fiber Fest.

Celeste


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Breeding update: Celeste stayed down for about 10 minutes for a breeding this a.m. My friend Phil of Applewood Alpaca Farm brought over a young stud of his. Beth and I had both noticed that Celeste doesn't seem to like white boys (does that make her a racist?) so thought we should try a different colored alpaca. Phil brought Pudge, his fawn colored boy, over and after about 15 minutes of being silly, she seemed to figure out what she was supposed to do. YEA! He will bring Pudge back in about three days to try again. If you want to see Pudge click on Phil's link above and look for Silver Creek's Minute Man.

About 9:30, Mary and I are leaving for Suzanne Pufpaff's mill to pick up my roving. I am so excited to see it that I was up at 4:30 this morning.

♥♥♥♥♥ Eeeehaw! Ariana bred for 24 minutes (yep, that's right - exactly 24 minutes - we time them ☺) with the handsome stud Alderon who is here for a 'paca holiday. We are so hoping that Celeste will be willing tomorrow a.m. Although alpacas are induced ovulators the do have a cycle of about two weeks when follicles ripen and she will be usually be more ready to breed and conceive. We women living together, and horses, and dogs, and who knows what else, will have our periods together. So I'm thinking, why not alpacas. If Ariana was ready today, why not Celeste tomorrow?

This picture is of our sweet Ariana and her last cria, Orion (barn name - Slammer). She was bred to a black boy and produced brown Orion then, but Alde is white so I'm predicting a white cria next spring. Gestation is 11 months.

Back on Blossom Street

About a month ago I received an email from Anne, a Marketing Coordinator, who asked if I would like a copy of Debbie Macomber's new novel to review and use in any way to promote it. Of course, I said yes because I am a Macomber fan. In fact, I had just ordered a copy from Amazon. I received these two copies in the mail and cancelled my Amazon order. I read one and was delighted to meet old friends and be introduced to a few new ones. I knew that I was going to give these away and didn't want one to look read. Have you ever read a book by opening it just enough to peek inside? Husband thought it was pretty funny.

My give away plan is to use them as drawings on Saturday and Sunday at the FiberFestival in Allegan, MI. That would be August 18 and 19, 2007.

♥♥♥♥ Still no alpaca breedings here.

Getting ready for Michigan Fiber Festival

This is what I have been doing in my kitchen for the last few days. Definitely not cooking. I hate to cook! I'm going through bags and bags of roving deciding what I want to get ready for the Michigan Fiber Festival. I couldn't decide how I wanted to present the roving. Leaving it in the plastic bags and weighing up for people doesn't seem very professional so I came up with this process.

First I weigh out the roving into 1 or 2 ounce piles (I always add a little more), then wind it around pegs on my warping board. The pictures that you see happen to be the 1 ounce samples. Cary suggested that I do 1 ounce samples for folks to try. Sure appreciate her advice since I have only done a walk through at a fiberfest once in my life and don't really know what I'm getting ready for. Anyway...... then I am wrapping the sample with a label featuring a picture of the alpaca that I printed up on cardstock on my computer. I think I will price these small samples at $4 a ball? bump? wrap?, and offer a mix and match at 4 for $12.

So far I have wrapped 73 2 ounce samples and 32 1 ounce samples. Goes fast because I can do it on my bar dividing the living room and kitchen, allowing me to visit or watch television.

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Anyone interested in the breeding that is supposed to be going on in the barn -Ariana almost cushed (cush, meaning kneeling on all 4s) this a.m. She was interested but wouldn't stay down. I'm trying to be patient.

'Paca Porno

I'm going to talk about alpaca breeding because I think the whole alpaca thing is so interesting. First of all, you must realize that alpacas are induced ovulators which means they won't ovulate until conditions are right. The conditions are, or so I understand, that the male must penetrate her and while he is doing that, he orgles. The orgle is a loud, gurgling sound that the guy makes the whole time he is with his woman. The mating itself may go on for half an hour or so and the whole time, he is doing his orgling thing. It may take a long time because he is a dribbler, not a spurter. :-)

The reason I'm mentioning this today is because we have been trying to get a breeding on Celeste and Ariana, so every morning this week one of them have gone over to visit Alde, our visiting stud. We aren't having much luck. If the female is ready, she will cush (like little Orion is doing in the picture above). If not ready or pregnant, she supposedly will spit at him, maybe kick, and run off. Neither of the girls are doing this, but they just won't go down for him.

We are definitely amateur breeders and are getting frustrated. I guess there is about a two week period when their receptivity raises and falls. I think we need to be patient for another week or so.

Update on the two girls who are off to be bred - haven't heard from Lady Belita in Jackson, but Sonata, at Belding, probably is bred and will be ultrasounded soon. We're hoping - that's with Tribute, the handsome gray guy with incredibly fine fiber.

The picture above is of Orion and mom, Ariana, just an hour after birth. Alpacas don't lick or clean their cria up like many animals but let them dry off naturally. This makes me think of another fun fact to know and shout. They normally have their cria in the morning or before 1 or 2. The theory on this is that in the mountains (Andes) of South America, it gets very cold at night and to survive the newborn needs that sun of daytime to dry off and warm up.

Later in the day. Hmmm, this probably WAS "too much information" . Sorry, I guess I just got carried away but, like I said, I find the whole process incredibly interesting and sometimes assume that the whole world wants to know what I know........and then the teaching genes just kick in.