Pronking Tesoro

At dusk most evenings, the young alpacas love to run and play. Tesoro's "gazelle-type" romping is called "pronking." It looks like he's spring-loaded!



At the end of that run, he sidles up to Windancer, not the least bit out of breath, and posed as if he's been there all along. Then he bounced off again.

More Arrivals

by transport, not by birth... yet.

With the latest nine sets of alpaca toes that stepped off the transporter this morning, most of our herd is at our Eugene farm now. Matt and Don drove through the night and arrived at 7:30 a.m. Flora was first off the trailer, quickly followed by the others. At four months old and still nursing, Tesoro stayed close to his mom, Windancer.

The girls were met with open spaces and lots of green grass -- and six other inquisitive dams on the other side of the fence. Galileo and Orion checked them out as the group ran past through the nearest open gate. Curiosity took them into the next pasture, where we really wanted them to go.

Next, the weanling males disembarked, to be rejoined with Dakota and Sorrento. Sundancer (7/06) is still small for his age, the same size as Sulaymon, who is a whole year younger (7/07). Sulaymon's white fleece is dirty enough to look like Sundancer's golden locks. Soon we will become adept at telling them apart at a glance. They all have their nametags on, scribed by Humberto, sometimes with Spanglish spellings.

Our last five alpacas more are in various stages of breeding in So CA and will join us in a few months. Plus the weanling Modoc who missed this 'bus' so will catch the next one. He was shorn yesterday, so at least he's ahead of everyone else in that respect.

Nineteen alpacas reside here now. Waiting for the birth of Disa's cria to make it an even 20!

Additions & Subtraction

Last Monday, our 'sheep friend' Elissa drove with me to pick up our two yearling boys who at been at the CA Classic. The 1990 Silhouette van is just right for one adult or two younger alpacas. Dakota and Sorrento hummed and adjusted and cushed then readjusted the whole 2.5 hours, and they were delighted to disembark upon arrival at their new home. For four days they had been transported, penned at a show, paraded in the ring, trailered to a strange place for overnight, then ridden in the van. Enough!

But good buddies can endure lots together. They look so 'at home' in their pasture now. By protocol, they are quarantined for three weeks to make certain they did not pick up anything in their travels. So far, so good.

Huge THANK YOUs to Larry and Paula Vellozzi of Adorabella Alpacas in Grants Pass for bringing the boys up to Oregon for us!

[What secret is Dakota whispering to Sorrento?]

Our next set of alpacas arrives by Cedar Ridge Transport this weekend. The five dams and four young males will almost double our alpaca population. And we will finally get to meet Tesoro, our Casanova son born in January. We will need to step up the pace of dispensing food and scooping poop. Greeting them each morning by name is a pleasure.

The Neonatal Class at Oregon State University's Veterinary School last Saturday was timely and right on target for me. Drs Long and Cebra exude enthusiasm, humor and passion about these marvelous creatures and their well-being. The doctors' knowledge and insights, and willingness to share them, were a huge boost to me as we begin 'life with alpacas.'

There were only 12 'students' so there was ample time for individual questions and discussion. Part of the class was a lab experience where we practiced identifying -- by blind touch -- a dystocia: awkward fetal presentation that needs manipulating to correct position for birth to occur. With these practice sessions, the confidence I have in caring for our animals has increased a notch, and I am grateful that such opportunities are available, for I always want to learn.

Then on Monday afternoon, the class became very real for me. While driving down to pick up the yearling boys, I got a call from our agisting ranch that Autumn had gone into labor; but it had not progressed, so they called the vet. She had a uterine torsion (rotated or 'flipped' uterus). The doctor had never dealt with that before (he's mostly goats, sheep and horses), so another camelid vet (an hour away) talked them through how to rotate the uterus back into correct position, with success. I was so glad to have seen this very technique in the movie and photos at the class, because I could picture it exactly.

Autumn was dilated, ready to deliver her cria. It was a dystocia: anterior presentation with head turned back. He repositioned for birthing, but that was very hard due to the size. Initially, the cria was alive, but the umbilical must have been broken because during the long process to birth her, and she drowned. They reported that she weighed 25 lbs! The dam is large-framed, but not over-weight, and gestation was right at 11.5 months. She was Sorrento's full sister and would have been a very welcome addition considering the last 10 births to our herd were male cria.

We check on Disa several times a day, sometimes by peering out the window with binoculars to be less disruptive. Of course we hope that birth (our first one here) will be normal, but after taking the neonatal class, I feel somewhat equipped to identify if it is not. And that information will help me to not panic.

April Showers!

Last weekend we took a motorcycle ride to nearby Dexter Lake and watched the Covered Bridge Regatta -- racing shells from schools and universities all over the Pacific Northwest. The day was a warm 74° and everyone was in T-shirts, shorts and flip-flops. Lots of other motorcyclists were out enjoying the countryside, as well as picnickers, boaters, hikers, etc. We marveled at how the most perfect weekend was set on the calendar at least a year in advance.

While in town on errands one day, I snapped this photo of tulips bursting forth. It must finally be Spring!

Of course it rained a couple of days this week, but not before Mike mounted his 'other' motorized vehicle, a riding mower. After thorough comparisons, we decided that a mower would suit our needs better than a small tractor at this point. And we got a cart to pull along behind it, but we haven't tried that yet.

Mike took it slow through the pastures, getting acquainted with the drivability over basketball-sized lumps of grass and along folds in the land, stopping ever so often to remove rocks or branches or whatever. A few of our pastures are too sloped to mow this way, so we'll figure out another method. Once all of the alpacas are here, they'll keep it trimmed down, but until then, we need to tackle it.

And then the weather did a major switchback to Winter: this weekend we awakened to snow both mornings!! The girls are smart enough to go under the shelter or in the barn to sleep; however, the two boys toughed it out in their pasture. The alpacas seemed to wonder who took all the green grass, but once the temperature warmed up, and the snow quickly melted away.
Orion has never seen snow before, whereas Galileo is an old hand at it. When Orion stood up, he seemed to be contemplating the new landscape, wondering if he should step on it. I encouraged them into the shed with a small bowl of pellets (they usually get them in the evenings), and brushed the 2 inched of white stuff off of Orion's back. I am still getting used to how sturdy the alpacas are, and how adept they are to weather that seems so odd to me. I've never lived in snowy regions before either.

Kelly-dog didn't seem to mind the snow at all.

So, if April showers bring May flowers, what do April snow-showers bring?

Boyz arrive

A few decades ago when I was in college, we'd yell "Man on the floor!" in the girls' dorm on the rare occasions when a male was carrying luggage up to a room. But when our two herdsires arrived, no one had to tell the other alpacas that they were there. The dams immediately ran over to the fence to greet them -- "Look, more of our kind!"

Due to bad weather across the Rockies and the resulting backtracking to take another route west, Galileo had been on the transport trailer for a week. Orion had a shorter tour, but both were glad to see open spaces, green grass, and girls.

The two males have similar temperaments and get along well. They engaged in one king-of-the-mountain fight, and I separated them for a time. Orion resorts to spitting at his buddy, but he was wearing more green stuff on his mouth than Galileo was on his fleece. Orion is younger and has some catching up to do in the dignity department.

The dams are all pregnant, so there's no interest there. We're expecting two births in May, and the boys will each have a date after that.

Summer (peeking at me through the office window) is Galileo's half sister, and I've wondered if she and Lace remember him. They are often together fence-side, as if to say hello to a former acquaintance from the same farm.

Vegetable Lasagna

Well, it's not quite what you think... no yummy recipes here. It's a new-to-me way of developing our garden plot. As it turns out, a new acquaintance of ours is a Master Gardener with the Lane County Extension Office, and she stopped by to help us identify an unknown weed in our pastures. She had lots of other ideas to share, and among them was a simple way of readying our designated garden area. It's a sort of layered mix of cardboard, manure, leaves, newspaper, clippings and mulch. Our soil rocky with six inches of heavy clay on top of it. So to lighten it up, I'm going to use the "lasagna" method, also called sheet mulching.

Since we have plenty of cardboard boxes leftover from moving in, I started with them, opening them wide and removing the tape. I just layed them down on top of the grass and weeds, to kill them by blocking the sunlight, adding to the mulch. No mowing or digging necessary.

Then I topped the cardboard with a layer of alpaca beans from yesterday's clean-up. Alpaca manure is often called "alpaca gold" because it is nutrient-rich and can be applied directly to plants without burning them, and it composts well.

Next, a layer of dead grasses, long and seedless, that I grabbed from an old fence line. I need to import some leaves that I've raked in another area, and get discarded newspaper from a neighbor to complete the layers. But the rain comes and goes several times a day, so I've let it begin the decomposition for now. It was a quick start, and has me motivated to continue.

But then I thought that I should have begun the layering with a "carpet"of chicken wire on the bottom, to keep out the gophers and moles. So we bought that today and will put it under what I've started so far, and continue with that when I start the other sections. All of this is intended as raised bed, so we will border them with wood or timber.

Often we find earthworms whenever we dig, or we see them inching away from a boggy area so they don't drown. Now I will begin to collect them and relocate them to the garden zone.

I've already browsed the Territorial Seed Company catalog, selecting vegetable types I'd like to plant. And since they are in nearby Cottage Grove, we can go and talk to them directly and get their recommendations.

Last year at this time, a blackberry thicket was much of hiding our fence line. We had them cut down, and now that sunlight can reach the ground, there has sprouted several plants that roughly resemble zucchini bushes: large, serrated leaves growing out from a center, and less than knee-high.

I took photos and sent them to Melissa-the-Pasture-Lady (Small Farms Advisor for Oregon State Univeristy extension). I also posted the photo on EVAA's (our local alpaca association's) email list: Does anyone know what this plant is, or if it is harmful to alpacas? One of the other farm owners at first suspected it to be the dangerous and toxic Giant Hogweed, and located an online brochure (PDF) for me to compare it with. From the photo, Melissa said she was 99% sure that it is Cow Parsnip, Heracleum lanatum. We continued the search to be certain.

As mentioned, Master Gardener Joy offered to come and look at the mystery plant in its natural habitat, and to bring along some of her taxonomy books, to identify it. This invader is definitely Cow Parsnip, which is often mistaken for Giant Hogweed, its nasty cousin. In fact, I recall seeing CP in flowering form across the road last year. Its large white flowers resemble Queen Anne's Lace, and I had picked them for a flower arrangement.

The cream-colored tap root looks rather like a parsnip, hence the common name. I have been methodically digging it out of our pasture and the boys' pen, and will continue to check that area to make certain it is eradicated.

Because the Boys are coming! Our herdsire Galileo has been picked up at his "other home, " Eclipse Alpacas in Michigan. After a respite in Iowa to wait out a snowstorm, they will journey to So CA to pick up Orion, along with other alpacas needing a ride along the route, and will arrive here early next week.

It has been so very nice to get to know our small group of girls for these first weeks, and now we look forward to adding another dimension -- two areas to tend to, to clean and feed and maintain and enjoy.

And in a few weeks, the yearling boys Dakota and Sorrento will arrive, after making an appearance at The California Classic.

Hurray, the Boys are coming!

Easter blessings

Easter is the one holiday in the Christian calendar that has no defined date. Instead, it 'floats' in late March or early April, falling on the Sunday closest to the full moon. Sometimes Easter is celebrated during the Hebrew Passover, other years it is not since they are based on different calendar configurations.

All this to say that our Easter weekend was tenderly touched by layers of events beyond us. On Friday -- aka, Good Friday, the prelude to Easter -- we learned that one of our first friends in the alpaca business, Ed Warynick, had died peacefully that morning. Ed was a retired engineer and test pilot who, along with his wife Elizabeth, embraced the gentle alpaca. They sold their home, bought a farm in the village of Los Olivos, just north of Santa Barbara, and learned to care for their herd of alpacas, several llamas, sheep from the Santa Ynez Mission, and a collection of rescued dogs with health issues. The figure of St Francis near the barn area reflects their love for animals and their Creator.

Alpacas de los Olivos was one of the ranches I was privileged to visit and offer assistance, on herd health days or at shearing time. Ed taught me about designing pens so one person could easily move the animals from one area to another. He was a gracious gentleman and host to many visitors on Open Ranch days, charming them with his stories of his animals.

Even though I had not seen Ed in awhile, already I miss his kind voice and the twinkle in his eye as he offered his advice. So I thought about him as I tended our animals through the weekend...

A friend joined us for a mid-day Easter dinner. I'd forgotten to turn my cell phone on, so missed a message from her. And another one, too, apparently: earlier a neighbor had called to say that when she went out to feed her sheep and donkeys, there were two new lambs in the stall! First-time mom, Rasta Girl, had birthed a male and female with no problems.

So we popped the apple pie in the oven and dashed over to see them. New life is so sweet to behold! The boy is coal black with tight, lustrous curls, and his sister looks like someone smeared white on her face. Rasta instinctively knew how to care for them, and she has plenty of milk.


These lambs are a blend of breeds: Cotswold-Wensleydale (Rasta, ewe) and Gotland-Shetland (Pappy, ram). The donkeys (Mediterranean minis, often depicted in the Christmas story as Mary's mode of transportation) were curious about the new additions to their world, and came to meet the lambs. Meanwhile, another ewe showed up bedecked with blackberry vines that she'd obviously gotten stuck in. We laughed at the dangling roots and sprigs of leaves that were her Easter bonnet. The other sheep helped to nibble them off.

Returning in time to check on the apple pie, we nodded to our five dams and reassured them how simple birth would be for them in the coming weeks and months.

So the holiday was poignant with unexpected blessings: the peaceful death of a man of strong faith on Good Friday, and the birth of black twin lambs to a Jewish friend on Easter morning.

Mike and I concluded this ecumenically diverse weekend by watching Cry of the Snow Lion, a chronicle of Tibet's recent past told through interviews and personal stories. Since we have no TV here (by choice), our news input is quite selective, and watching this documentary gave valuable perspective on current events.

Peace... whatever that means for you
at this moment, and the next.