July 15, 2008: We just returned from a rather lengthy trip to pick up Nell and Maggie from another farm after having Nell bred again. Both are doing fine and getting re-acquainted with all their former pasture mates. Maggie has grown sooooo much since we last saw her. She now weighs almost 40 lbs. When we sent them off, Maggie only weighed about 20 lbs. so we hardly recognized her when we picked them up. Dr. Norm Evans examined Nell and gave her a clean bill of health and we are already looking forward to her next cria.      Caesar is still doing better and gaining weight all the time. He and Maggie are getting acquainted and beginning to play. I'm sure all the exercise of running and jumping around is going to be good for his leg joints and muscles. He still has a small amount of splay in his front legs, but he seems to be getting better as time goes along. All the other problems associated with his difficult birth have disappeared with treatment, so we are hoping his legs will follow suit...He is still being bottle fed every three hours, but he is beginning to nibble on grass and hay, so hopefully he will begin weaning himself before long. He is a month old now and appears to be about two weeks delayed in his development due to the nureological problems following birth. However, he is making steady progress and we just consider him a two week old rather than a four week old. Using that gauge, he appears to be quiet normal and developing normally...

June 30, 2008: Just an update on Caesar. We had a plasma transfusion done on June 24th and did a two day round of Thiamine shots. He is running around the paddock, aggrivating all the other alpacas, and appears to be good as new as far as the problems associated with his difficult birth are concerned. He still has a little bit of splayed front legs, but I have been told to hold off doing any corrective measures on them until he is about two months old. Possible they will correct themselves without any intervention on our part. Since both Synsation and Caesar were so exhausted after the birth, Caesar never nursed from mom, so I began milking her and mixing the mother's milk with colostrum substitute and feeding him from a bottle. I had hoped that when he recovered from the birthing problems, he would begin nursing on his own. However, I have placed Caesar under Synsation several times over the past couple of days and she immediately kushes. She apparently thinks I am going to milk her again and I believe she is tired of that scenario. So, looks like I have a bottle baby on my hands to feed every three hours for the long haul. I didn't need any sleep anyhow, so what the heck...

June 19, 2008: Synsation finally delivered a beautiful maroon colored boy today. She is a very small framed alpaca and the cria was pretty big at 17 lbs 15 oz at birth. As a result, Caesar (LHAF Caesar Magnumus) was a dystocia birth and took a very long time to be born and had to have help. Both mom and cria were exhausted by the time the vet was able to get Caesar unlocked from Synsation's pelvic bone and deliver him. He's got some minor problems as a result of the long delivery, but is being treated and should make a full recovery. Also, due to both of them being so exhausted, Caesar was unable to nurse from mom for a long time and we are sure he didn't get a satisfactory transfer of colostrum, so he is getting a plasma transfusion as soon as the plasma comes in. All things considered, he is in exceptional condition and already gaining weight. He's a SCA Peruvian Magnum baby and Magnum has passed his exceptional fleece through to Caesar. Caesar has extremely soft fleece for a dark colored alapca, any alpaca for that matter. What's even better is that he is maroon colored, not just dark brown, but maroon...Wow!!!

June 1, 2008: We are still waiting on Synsation to deliver her latest cria. She was due on the 29th of May but has so far not had the urge to deliver. We continue to watch for any signs of impending delivery as Synsation is a small framed alpaca and historically has large cria. During the last two deliveries she had to have help, so we are very watchful.      Nell and Maggie have been sent to another farm to have Nell re-bred. Even though Maggie was only a little more than two weeks old when she left with Nell, we really miss having her bouncing little body around. Everything seems so quiet without her here. Not that she made any noise, but she was always up to some sort of mischief. Hopefully the six weeks that they will be gone will pass quickly and we'll once again have them back so we can enjoy Maggie while she is still small and full of energy for playing...

May 9, 2008: Nell delivered a beautiful light fawn girl yesterday. She weighed 15 lbs. 12 oz. at birth and appears very healthy. I caught Nell just as Magnolia's (Maggie's) nose appeared so I got to witness the entire birthing sequence. It was all over in about 20 minutes and Maggie was up and nursing in about 30 more minutes. They are both doing fine...

May 2, 2008: Shearing Day is finally upon us. We sheared our girls yesterday and had a wonderful time. The girls were not exceptionally pleased with being sheared, but they sure were pleased when all that fleece got off them. We'll finish up with the boys tomorrow. A couple of the girls were not too ready to get up and go back to the pasture once we were done with the shearing, so they got a "little help from their friends".

April 16, 2008: Our new alpaca trailer has finally arrived. The guy that delivered it drove 20 hours to get it here on time. Thanks Mark for that monumental effort. The trailer is a Hawk Alpaca Special, built by Hawk Trailers, LLC in Manawa, Wisconsin. It is similar to a horse trailer but has several features designed especially for alpacas. The most notable feature being that it is only 5'8" tall, thus reducing wind drag, making it more economical to pull. It has an all steel frame, aluminum skins and fiberglass top. All the walls are fully insulated and it has six large sliding windows. It has double rear doors and one interior double door divider, with an escape door in front. We are very pleased to have the new trailer and wish to thank the nice folks up at Sunset Ranch Supply, LLC in Wausau, Wisconsin for being so helpful in arranging everything to get this purchase accomplished without a single hitch. A special thanks goes to Deb for all her help getting everything arranged while they were getting ready for a very large horse show the week of April 14-18. If you need a trailer, please get in touch with Sunset. They'll treat you right.

February 12, 2008: You know, there's a lot to be said for living outside the city limits. Since we are inside the city limits of Ozark, I have been jumping through hoops for almost 6 weeks trying to get the building permit for the construction of my barn, and I had someone helping me at City Hall. I have finally got that permit in-hand, but now I am dealing with the county health department trying to get the permit for installation of my septic system. I really don't know where some of these rules and regulations came from, but I'm convinced that whoever thought them up was not in complete control of their faculties. I guess, somebody put them forth over the years until now there are so many conflicting rules that it is almost completely impossible to conform to them all. If the powers-that-be want to give you a hard time about something, they have enough red tape to tie you up for as long as they want. That's so sad, since this process could be so straightforward and simple. It's little wonder that Ozark is the ONLY city in the entire Wiregrass Area (southeast Alabama) to have a negative population growth over the past 10 years...

January 14, 2008: Happy New Year everyone. Double Trouble is now a month old and is beginning to look like an alpaca instead of a sheep. His fleece is uncurling and starting to look like a typical Huacaya. He is so full of mischief he is worrying all the other alpacas to death. He bounces around while they are trying to eat and disturbs everything. He puts his head down low and takes off running like a rocket and does laps around the pen as fast as he can run. The others try to ignore his antics, but he is so persistant in his playing, most of the others eventually play with him a little. Who knew a full grown alpaca could jump higher than my head and run like a deer. It's a good thing that alpacas don't try to jump over a fence because they could clear my 5' high fences with little effort. These wonderful little animals never cease to amaze me...

December 23, 2007: Well the new cria (LHAF Double Trouble) is now a week old. He lost a lot of weight that first night when it was so cold but he has gained weight steadily each day and is almost back up to his birth weight. He is gaining strength every day and is almost more that one person can handle to weigh him every morning. He and our other cria, Alexis, are already playing chase. He chases her a while and then she chases him. It works best when he chases her bacause she can catch him too fast since she is almost 7 months old now. They have fun though and they sure are fun to watch. Double Trouble (Dub for short) has such long legs that he looks like a Flamenco Dancer when he tries to kush. He stomps around with all four feet trying to get everything in just the right place to lay down. Sometimes he gets the front end down and still has to stomp around with his back end before he can get it in the right position. Finally he gets down, but he sure is cute going through his dance routine. He can jump up like lightening, but getting down is a different story...

December 16, 2007: Butterscotch delivered a beautiful little boy today - the coldest day of the year so far. He was a small cria, weighing only 12 lbs. 11 oz. at birth. Even with Butterscotch on "baby watch" she still managed to deliver without our knowing about it until it was over. When I found the cria, he was extremely cold so we began warming it immediately. However, it's core temperature was so low that it took several hours to reach normal temperature. We made the decision to move Butterscotch and the new cria into the basement where there was heat available. During all this time, he was too weak to stand, so we ended up milking Butterscotch and feeding him the colorstrum with a syringe. Once we got the colorstrum in him, he began to perk up and had finally gained the strength to stand at about 10:00PM. He was standing and walking around by about midnight, so we felt much better about his chances. At 2:00AM on the 17th, he was nursing and smacking so loudly you could hear him from across the room. At 4:30AM, he was nursing again and when we checked on them at 6:00AM, he was nursing once again. So, I guess he's a real eater since he has figured out where the plumbing is. He is now alternating between nursing, sleeping, and pooping, so I guess he in the correct cycle for a newborn cria...

December 5, 2007: Wow, here it is almost Christmes again. Boy the year has just zoomed by. We have already put Butterscotch on "baby watch" even though she is not actually due until the 29th of this month. Fall babies historically come early, so we are taking the precaution of watching her to make sure she doesn't deliver a little bundle of fleece on a cold morning without our knowing about it. She still doesn't have any milk as far as I can tell, but she has so much fleece, it is hard to actually get a good look. So, the wait goes on...

November 10, 2007: The delivery date for our animals has finally arrived. They are here and have adjusted well to their new surroundings. As soon as they got off the trailer and we took their halters off, they began eating grass and I don't think they have stopped yet. They were all a little standoffish to begin with, but the more I am around them the more they seem to be accepting me. They now meet me at the gate at feeding time and will almost take me down to get to the feed pans. Especially Butterscotch. She has turned out to be a real hog when it comes to getting her head into a feed pan. But, being about 11 months pregnant, I guess she feels that she has to get her fair share to help her produce milk and help the baby develop. However, her hormones are really going crazy right now, so even though you are her best buddy when you have the feed, she will turn on you and spit at you for any little thing at other times. I can touch her and rub her neck all I want while I am feeding them, but I don't dare try to walk up to her and touch her any other time. I've been told that once she is open, she turns into a pussy cat and wants to be touched all the time, but let her get pregnant and she does a 180 degree turn about. Funny how their personality changes once they are bred. Anyway, we are so pleased to have them finally at our place even though there is lots of work involved in caring for them. I love it...

October 2007: We have now found out for sure what happened to Bishop (See Sept. 10th post). From the information gained from the necropsy, it was discovered that Bishop didn't have a bout of heat stress as was originally suspected. He had kidney disease but it manifested itself to look exactly like heat stress. He had evidently had the kidney problem all along and nobody knew anything about it until his kidneys completely shut down. I'm really sorry it happened, but at least it was because of something that none of us had any control over. He simply had a disease that didn't show itself until it was too late to save his life...      We have finally gotten a little rain, so we are now planting grass seed. We have fenced in a small temporary area that already has good grass and are expecting our animals to be arriving on-site the second weekend in November. We can hardly wait for them to arrive.      Greg just returned from three days working in the Alpaca Pavilion at the Sunbelt Expo in Moultrie, Georgia and he had a great time. There is so much interest being generated in the alpaca business right now it is hard to answer all the questions being asked. It appears that the people that are truly interested in alpacas are asking more and more sophisticated questions about them, indicating to me that they are actually retaining the information they are receiving and building that information into a good, solid basis for taking steps to get into the alpaca business. That's very good. The more information you have before buying, the better off you are going to be. One should thoroughly investigate any business venture before investing in them and alpacas are no exception. Visit farms, go to shows, ask lots of questions and learn all you can from others already in the business...

September 10, 2007: We have had a traumatic experience this past weekend. We got a call from the farm where our alpacas are being boarded that Bishop, one of our herdsires, was very ill. He had suffered heat stress and the vet had been out twice already to work with him. After a third visit by the vet, it was determined that Bishop was not getting any better, so he was placed in the trailer for an emergency trip to Auburn University's Vet school for treatment. On Sunday, I received a call from Auburn saying that Bishop was in grave health and was not expected to make it, but they would let me know how things were going on Monday morning. Monday's call came with the same news. Bishop was in complete kidney failure and needed to be put down to end his suffering. That was a hard decision to make, but since there was less than a 10% change of his getting better, Shelia and I went ahead and consented to having Bishop put down. The results of this experience was devistating to both of us as well as the previous owners who were still boarding Bishop. We know in our hearts that everything that could be done, was done by all those involved in an effort to save Bishop and we place no blame on anyone. After Bishop was lost, I did a lot of research on heat stress in alpacas and found out that some animals show no outward signs of being in heat stress until it is well in progress. By that time, the body of the animal has undergone severe changes that make the possibility of recovery slim at best. Bishop had been given 22 units of IV fluids and was still not any better. He was also bleeding internally from a heat induced ulcer, which is common in severe cases of heat stress. Therefore, Bishop seemed to be one of those alpacas that simply didn't show the signs of heat stress until it was too late. Raising alpacas in the hot climate of south Alabama is a tricky business. I know that we are at the end of a very hot, humid summer, but I want to stress to all alpaca farmers to keep a close watch of their animals as heat stress is still a deadly possibility, even as we transition into cooler weather...

July/August 2007: We're moving along, even though it has been a little slower than originally anticipated. We have had the loggers in and clear cut about 4 acres of land for new pastures. The heavy equipment is supposed to be in the first week in August to begin digging out the stumps and piling-up and burning all the debris from the logging operation. We have begun buying grass seed, fencing, and fence posts and will start putting in the new pastures as soon as the clearing equipment moves out.

May 2007: In early May we began moving the goat herd from some land currently owned by Greg's father in Ozark, in the southeast corner of Alabama. We began cleaning up the pastures and cleansing them of any parasites that might be present due to the goats having been raised on these pastures for several years prior. We will soon begin removing some of the trees, planting grass suitable for alpacas, rebuilding the fences and building a new barn. We have had our alpacas boarded at another alpaca farm until we could get this goat-to-alpaca transformation completed, but we plan on having the alpacas moved to their new home by late summer or early fall, 2007.

April 2007: Synsation gave birth to a little girl on the 30th of the month. She is charcoal gray with a white face and stockings and weighs 18.5 lbs. Both mother and baby are doing fine.

March 2007: We finally purchased some alpacas to begin building our foundation herd. We purchased seven alpacas, four bred females and three males. All of the females are Blue Ribbon winners and all of the males are Blue Ribbon winners and/or Champions and all have produced Blue Ribbon winning offspring. Therefore, we have started with a core of very high quality breeding females and two seasoned herdsires and one new herdsire. The bred females are all currently bred to Championship quality herdsires and should be giving birth in the next couple of months so we can hardly wait. As they give birth, we will then rebreed most of them to SCA Peruvian Magnum, an exceptional herdsire standing at stud at the farm where we originally purchased the girls. This herdsire is a very high-quality, Champion male that consistently produces Championship offspring. He has just been purchased from a farm in another region of the country and brought to the Southeast and we will be one of the first farms in the area to obtain breedings from this herdsire, so we have great expectations for our cria next year. We believe that the quality of the breeding stock is one of the keys for a successful alpaca business operation, so we have tried to start with the very best alpacas that we could afford. Even though these alpacas were substantially more expensive than we had originally intended to purchase, we believe they will pay for themselves multiple times over due to their ability to produce ourstanding offspring...      Update: My Peruvian Earth Angel delivered a bouncing baby girl on March 28th, 2007. She looks almost just like her sire, Ameripaca's Atlas. Due to contractual agreement, the selling farm gets to keep this cria. However, since we now own both Angel and Atlas, we can reproduce this cria any time in the future. Angel will be bred to Accoyo McGwire the second week in April, which should produce another exceptional cria for next year.

December 2005: Shelia and Greg both successfully completed a two-day CAMELIDynamics Clinic taught by Marty McGee Bennett at Fairhope Alpacas in Fairhope, Alabama. This was once again one of Marty's classic clinics where she passed along her knowledge of handling alpacas in a respectful manner that makes the animals very easy to work with. Marty is a real work of art when she is working with the alpacas. Just her presence in the catch pen puts the alpacas at ease and they seem to be truly interested in working with her. Again we were amazed at Marty's knowledge and her ablilty to impart that knowledge to both the humans as well as the alpacas. If you don't get a ready opportunity to take one of Marty's clinics, make that extra effort and go to one even if you have to travel a bit. You won't believe how much time and effort you will save by using Marty's techniques with your animals.

April 2005: Greg successfully completed a three-day CAMELIDynamics Clinic taught by Marty McGee Bennett at Hickory Bluff Farms in Mt. Juliet, Tennessee. This class taught the basics of how to handle camelids in a way that builds trust in the animal and makes it much easier to work with the animals in a non-threatening environment. Marty truly understands the way camelids think and easily passes that information on to her students. If you get the chance to take one of Marty's clinics, please do so. You won't regret it and your animals will thank you for it.

February 2005: Shelia and Greg attended an "Alpaca 201" Clinic at Acacia Camelid Ranch in Palestine, Texas. This clinic was more advanced than the Alpaca 101 class taken earlier. More in-depth information was covered about raising alpacas and the problems which can arise on a daily basis on the farm. Both Shelia and Greg considered this additional clinic to be of great value to the new alpaca owner.

October 2004: Shelia and Greg attended an "Alpaca 101" Clinic at Fairhope Alpacas in Fairhope, Alabama. This clinic provided a goldmine of general information about owning alpacas for persons new to the alpaca business. We both learned a lot about buying and raising alpacas as well as general farm operation. We would recommend such a clinic to anyone considering getting into the alpaca business.

March 2004: By pure chance one day, we were introduced to an alpaca farmer at a local resturant and, after discussing raising alpacas with him, we later attended our first Alpaca Show in Shelbyville, Tennessee. This was our first introduction to alpacas, other than on television. After seeing these magical little animals in person, we both began planning a new lifestyle raising alpacas. We decided to learn as much about them as we could before we made a purchase. That way, our learning curve would not be quiet as steep as it would be if we jumped in and bought animals and then started learning about them. Our plan is to do our investigation and then buy in about two years...