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 because 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.