December 10, 2010: While we were out cleaning up the poop piles following the morning feeding, I looked out across the pasture and spotted a very large bird in a distant tree. We watched it for a while and then noticed an even larger one lower down in the same tree. I went in and got a pair of binoculars and we could tell that the birds were not your normal sized, run of the mill red-tailed hawks that we often see down here. After struggling to see them clearly through the binoculars for a while, I decided to go get my large spotting scope that I use when target shooting to get a better view. Once I got the scope set up, we were able to get a very up close view of them and discovered that they were juvenile bald eagles. Neither one had the white head or tail feathers yet, but their beaks were beginning to turn yellow and their feet had already turned yellow, so we are guessing they are about three to four years old. Not old enough for the full bald eagle plumage, but old enough to tell them from a golden eagle. They stayed in that one tree for about 45 minutes and we enjoyed watching them until they decided to move on to another location. We watched as they both flew off into the distance and were glad we had the opportunity to share their visit. I had seen lots of eagles when we lived up in north Alabama, but these are the first two that I have seen in south Alabama. Hopefully they are beginning to get a foothold in this area and there will soon be a good number of them around so others will have a chance to see these majestic birds. What a beautiful sight they are to see...

November 16, 2010: This was the day of "The Great Alpaca Escape". The wind was blowing fairly hard today and we obviously left the latch open on the main gate of the girl's pen. About noon my sister noticed that her back yard was full of alpacas and called me. Upon investigation, I discovered the wind had blown the gate open and all 18 of the girls had taken advantage of it to make their escape. They grazed for a while just outside their pen and then roamed down through our front yard and crossed the street (a private drive with no traffic) and ended up in my sister's back yard. We all went out and began clapping our hands and calling to the girls and they all began coming back up toward their pen. However, along the way they decided to stop by and visit the boys (who were still locked in) and cause a little ruckus with them. So, we got a few feed pans with pellets in them and that was enough to entice everyone back into their pen. Evidently they had a good time roaming around and didn't cause any problems in the neighborhood, but I am glad we live back well off the main highway. We are now ALL checking to make sure that every latch is replaced after we feed and clean up the pens each day...

October 28, 2010: This has not been such a good week for us. On Tuesday, one of our fellow alpaca owners and good friends lost his father. Although we didn't know him as a "close friend", the fact that he was the father of a "close friend" made the loss personal to us none the less. Also, about 18 months ago a group of us cousins decided that we should start a tradition of having lunch together every Friday and reconnect with some of those cousins that we have more or less lost contact with over the years. We've all had a great time during those Friday visits, but we lost one of those cousins on Wednesday following a short illness. So, the rest of this week will be filled with saying good bye to friends and relatives. May they both find peace as they continue their cosmic journey...

October 16, 2010: I took Butterscotch and Angel to the Vivian B. Adams School here in Ozark this morning for a visit. V. B. Adams School is a school for the disabled and learning impared and for many years now they have been doing a great job of helping the kids and young adults that attend there. They were having their "Fall Festival" today and wanted me to bring a couple of alpacas and set up a kind of petting zoo so everybody that had never seen an alpaca got the chance to pet one. Some wanted to pet them and some were a little skeptical of the idea and declined. I hope everybody had a good time looking at and petting the alpacas. I think the animals were a little overwhelmed at all that was going on since they spent most of their time kushed right under my feet. Anyway, those special folks that attend V. B. Adams School don't get an abundance of joy in their life, so if the alpacas helped put a little sunshine in their day, we were more than glad to do it. Thanks to the teachers and administration of Vivian B. Adams School for inviting us and I hope the rest of their day turned out to be a great success...

October 10, 2010: 10/10/10 - Suposed to be good luck I think. Anyway, we held our 4th Alpaca 101 class yesterday and had two attendees. Looks like every weekend toward the end of summer is now taken up with some sort of planned community activity. There was an air show here in town that we were bumping heads with this weekend, but no worries, we had a good day with just two folks taking the class. It allowed us to provide very personalized attention to all questions asked. I am assuming that everything was presented well with the class since we ended up answering several pages of written questions with the information presented during the class. So, we had a good day even though the classs size was small...

September 26, 2010: We had two good days for the National Alpaca Farm Days celebration. Visitation was a little slower than we had anticipated, but that was not such a bad thing as it gave us time to talk with each and every visitor and answer all their questions without feeling we were negelecting someone as they drove up. We were also competing with an air show 30 miles away, an antique auto show here in town, thunder storms in the area, and of course, SEC football, so I guess we did pretty good after all. Even with all that going on, one of the local television news crews showed up to cover the event and got some "up close and personal" attention from one of our girls. Butterscotch, you're a real ham. Thanks to all those that stopped by for a visit. We hope everyone went away with a new appreciation for these wonderful animals...

September 11, 2010: On this, the anniversary of 9/11, Veronica delivered a healthy baby boy. He is going to be very dark brown, like his grandfather, Ameripaca's Atlas. We were out feeding and I noticed that Veronica was acting differently than normal so we got to witness the brith from initial onset of labor right through the delivery. Within 30 minutes of onset of labor the cria was on the ground and the entire herd (or the females in the herd) were able to greet the new little one. What a wonderful experience, for the rest of the herd as well as the proud owners. Well done Massimo (sire) and Veronica...

July 15, 2010: This is an update to the May 27th post. We acquired some of the fly predators and put the first batch out about 6 weeks ago and put the second out about 3 weeks ago. It says that they will take between 10 to 14 days to start working. Well, something is definitely working. Before we put the predators out, we could hardly walk under the alpaca shelters. Yesterday, I could count the number of flies around the shelters on one hand. There are just no flies there any more. The fly strips hardly have any flies stuck to them either. I can only guess that due to the number of adult flies that we have caught on the fly traps and the number of fly larvae that have been destroyed by the predators we may have won the battle. I will certainly get some more predators as soon as it starts warming up next year. The alpacas are much happier without all those flies bothering them all the time. On another topic - hot weather. It is extremely hot in our area this year. Heat indices are running above 105 degrees most every day now. I have been wetting the alpacas down at least once and as many as three times a day for the past month. Normally the alpacas stand in line and wait to be wetted down, but lately it's a mob run to be the first one in line. They spit at each other just like they are being fed. Sometimes I get in the way and take a face full, since I'm right in their faces trying to get them wet. They are not spitting at me, but I just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. It still doesn't make it smell any better just because it's an accident though. Thank goodness we only have about two more months of this heat. Winter rocks...

June 1, 2010: We took the fleece we had collected for donating to the efforts to keep the oil off the Gulf Coast beaches to the collection facility in Fort Walton Beach, Florida today. In all, we collected almost 500 pounds of fleece from area alpaca farms. We would like to thank the following Alabama alpaca farms for contributing fleece to the cause - Alabama Peanuts and Pacas (Ozark), Humming Hills Alpacas (Newton), Little Hummers Alpaca Farm (Ozark), Mainly Alpacas (Ozark), Oak-Leigh Peacocks and Alpacas (Dothan), Serenity Farm Alpacas (Millbrook), Sueno Lane Alpacas (Newton) and Wiregrass Alpacas (Ashford). The folks at the Matter of Trust collection facility sent along their thanks to each and every farm that donated fleece. Nice job folks!!!

May 27, 2010: This year has been by far the worst year I can remember for flies (common house flies, horn flies, sweat bees, horse flies and all other biting flying varments). We have four of the bell shaped fly traps up and they almost have no liquid left in them due to the number of flies trapped within. We are also having to replace the sticky fly strips every three days because they are so full of flies that they are no longer sticky. Even though we had a cold winter last year, we are still covered up with flying varments. Since we finished shearing, we have been watching the alpacas very closely to make sure they don't get any fly related open sores from fly bites. We immediately treat anything that even looks like it might become a sore as soon as we spot it. Hopefully we will be able to stay ahead of the flies and keep any big problems from occurring...

May 22, 2010: After several false starts and a couple of actual starts then stops due to circumstances beyond our control, we finally finished shearing our animals yesterday. They were so glad to get all that fleece off as a couple of them had extra long growths of 6" or more for the year. I was glad to get them sheared due to the fact that the summer heat is here with today's temperature being 94 degrees and tomorrow's forecast for 96 degrees. Needless to say, everybody is relieved to have another year's shearing completed...

May 14, 2010: As many of you know, we are acting as a regional collection facility for alpaca fleece to be sent to the Gulf Coast area to help in cleaning up the oil spill. We have gotten positive responses from several of the alpaca farms in the area and are hoping for favorable responses from others. One of the local TV stations came up and did a news spot on our efforts and aired it on their local 5:00 PM, 6:00 PM, and 10:00 PM nightly news cast. Hopefully, any of the alpaca farms that we didn't include in our initial call for fleece will see the airing and decide to send us their thirds to include in the shipment. We are working with the "Matter of Trust" organization to coordinate our efforts in getting the fleece delivered to the correct place. "Matter of Trust" is an organization that helps coordinate efforts of widespread individuals or groups in working on a single task. They are spearheading the efforts of the alpaca farmers in providing fleece for the Gulf cleanup process. We are shooting for having all the fleece collected for delivery by the end of May. Anyone that reads this and has any fleece thirds that they would like to donate, please get in touch with us as soon as possible so we can arrange for your fleece to be included in the shipment...

April 29, 2010: This is only indirectly relate to alpacas, but for the past three days, Shelia and I have been almost out of commission with Bronchitis. We go out at 7:00 AM to feed the alpacas and clean up the poop piles and at 4:00 PM to feed them again. Other than that, we are trying to get a little sleep to replace the hours we have been missing at night due to bouts of uncontrolled coughing. If one of us is not coughing, the other one is. So, we've both gotten about 3 hours of sleep the past two nights. My whole upper torso is sore due to the deep, almost gut wrenching coughing associated with this. I get to coughing so hard some times that I am unable to catch my breath for what seems like several minutes at a time. However, things are looking up; I went to the doctor today and he gave me a steroid shot and put me on antibiotics and I feel much better this afternoon. Shelia is also feeling better today and, even though she didn't see the doctor, she thinks she has turned the corner toward recovery. At least both of us are coughing much less today and whenever we do, it is not nearly the deep, hard cougning as before. So, I think that by tomorrow we'll be back in the land of the living. Also, we went to Level Plains, a small town between Enterprise and Dothan, and looked at 12 acres of land this past Monday, but due to the bronchitis outbreak we have not been able to do any follow-ups yet. This piece of property has the most potential of anything we have been able to find so far, so we are hoping that nobody buys it out from under us before we can get some sort of financial arrangements worked out...

April 20, 2010: We would like to thank everybody that has emailed or called us offering support and encouragement during the past few troubling weeks. We have received a couple hundred phone calls and well over 1,000 emails from other Ozark residents, and in a town the size of Ozark that is a very substantial number. Every one has been positive in hoping for a favorable outcome for us being able to stay on our farm. Thanks to each and every one of you from the bottom of our hearts. It really makes us feel humble to find out that there are so many people behind us. I hope we will have a good resolution to report to you soon...

April 18, 2010: We had our second Alpaca 101 class this past Saturday and had a nice class. We had 6 people attend the class and I think everybody enjoyed it and learned a lot. The class is supposed to be for those considering alpaca ownership, but is open to anyone interested in learning more about alpacas. Only one person that attended this session already owns alpacas. The others are still learning about these unique little animals before actually purchasing their starter herd. I think those who were still unsure about owning alpacas are now convinced that they can actually take care of their animals and have made up their minds that alpaca ownership can work for them. I'm glad we could help them make that decision. By the way Ozark (who is trying to kick us out), as a result of our holding this class, three of the people that attended were from rather far from Ozark and stayed in your local motels and ate in your local restaurants...

April 5, 2010: Still looking for a suitable place to move the alpacas. I have begun taking down fencing and fence posts in preparation for the move. We have driven all over the southeastern part of Alabama looking for land with a house or trailer, but everybody appears to think their land has gold underneath it and values it very highly. We have found several "dumps" that rent for much more than my mortgage is on our 3 bedroom, 3 1/2 half bath house on 5 acres right outside Huntsville. So, needless to say, we are having a hard time locating a suitable place to move. So far, this year really sucks...

April 1, 2010: During the initial phases of this ordeal (see March 9th posting) I had tried to explain that, before we did anything at all, I had gone before the City Council and obtained a building permit to construct our barn. During that meeting I had to discuss, in detail, exactly what we were doing and the Council passed the request unanimously. At that time the now current Mayor was a Council member. So, both the current Mayor and all the City Council members knew exactly what we were doing and approved it. Two of the Council members and the Mayor either participated in "Alpaca Farm Days" at our farm last year or have since visited the farm, bringing family members to see the alpacas, again, knowing full well what we were doing here. Also, the previous Mayor stated that since we had livestock on the farm for as long as anybody could remember, we were "Grandfathered-in" anyway so everything was OK. I had always thought that Ozark had a Mayor/Council form of Government, but during this ordeal both myself and my brother-in-law were told by the Building Inspector's Office that the Mayor didn't know that he was talking about as far as "Grandfathering" and the Council had no authority to make any decision that was contrary to any existing ordinance. So, I guess I was incorrect about the type of Government model Ozark has and instead of a Mayor/Council form they have a Building Inspector's Department form since it appears they are the ones that are running the City's business. And no, this is NOT an April Fool's joke...

March 9, 2010: As many of you know, we moved back to my hometown of Ozark, Alabama almost two and a half years ago to help care for my elderly parents. We still own our house up in the north Alabama area and have been working on getting it ready to put on the market ever since. It's extremely hard to take a week long trip up there and get very much done. We are almost finished (we had a major remodel job going on when we decided to move) and we were up there last week. We also went to the Southern Select Alpaca Show over the weekend and it was a pretty good show even considering the economy. While we were up there we got a call from my brother-in-law (Joel) and as a result we are now in kind of a pickle. Just before we moved down here, we went to the City (we are inside the City limits) and got a building permit for a barn and explained what we were doing. The City fathers at the time were old-timers and knew my Father well so they told us that since we were way back off the main street and there had been animals on this property for over 200 years for as long as my family had owned the land, we were grandfathered-in so just go ahead and have at it. Well everything rocked along fine until this past weekend. Evidently, one of our neighbors called the City and complained about the animals being inside the City limits and the Police, Animal Control and Building Inspector descended on the farm and told Joel and my parents that the animals had to be gone within 10 days (by law). If not, we would receive a $500 fine for every week beyond that time period. By being nice to the Animal Police, Joel was able to foster some good will and he said that he would work with us and give us extra time to get them moved. We just got back down here late yesterday afternoon and I had to go talk to the Police this morning. The officer was really nice, but we ARE going to have to move the animals away from here. He did say that he would definitely work with us as far as extending the time frame for removal, but the end result will be to have them gone from this location. Even though I don't know who they were, I can't help thinking that the person who complained is a sorry excuse for a human being and worse excuse for a neighbor, but I guess it takes all kinds to make up the world. I'll post more as things progress...

February 13, 2010: Well, we survived the blizzard of 2010 yesterday. We got 5" of wet snow way down here in southeastern Alabama. We are only 90 miles from the Gulf of Mexico and here we are with snow on the ground. Amazing!!! The alpacas are not too sure exactly what snow is. Most of them have never seen snow before and evidently the ones that were born up north have forgotten about snow. They would walk around looking at the ground and then stop and look up at the sky as if to ask, "What the heck is this stuff?". They kinda walked around with their back legs spread out (for stability I guess) and they looked like big four-legged ducks waddling around. The babies were even funnier as they tried to stand underneath their mothers. Some of them are close to weaning age, so standing under another alpaca is not going to happen. But it was funny to watch them try anyway. The sun is out bright and the temperature is above freezing today, so the snow is melting and all that will be left before long is a big wet mess. At least the results of our blizzerds don't last too long...

January 17, 2010: Last night, RFD-TV broadcast a segment on alpaca ownership. In and of itself that was not too much to get overly excited about. However, what was really nice was the fact that the segment featured a local alpaca farm. Wanda and Jerry Sanders' alpaca farm (Alabama Peanuts & 'Pacas) was the location of the segment and was very well presented. We were a little surprised during the segment when Jerry was talking about how alpaca owners in the local area are always willing to help other owners. He related an incident with a new owner in the area that needed his help birthing their first cria. He didn't mention the other farm by name, but he was referring to our farm and the cria in question is about two years old and doing just fine. Thanks to Jerry's fast action, he helped us save our first cria and made our introduction to alpaca husbandry a positive experience. We send along our congratulations to Wanda and Jerry for being chosen to represent the local alpaca farmers on the RFD-TV segment...

January 14, 2010: During November and December 2009, a syndicated television segment called "It's a Green Christmas" was made available for local stations to air if desired. Approximately 100 stations in major metropolitan areas around the country did choose to broadcast the segment. However, regretfully none of the stations in our local viewing area felt inclined to do so. The segment presented alpacas as an eco-friendly livestock and fiber industry and shows some of the advantages that alpaca ownership provides. It only runs approximately 3.5 minutes, so if you would like to view it online, you may do so by clicking here. If you are concerned about the lack of local coverage of "Green alternative" television segments, please get in touch with the television stations in our local viewing area and tell the management that you are disappointed with their coverage, or lack thereof...

January 1, 2010: Happy New Year everyone! Well, we have just come through a very difficult year for all of us in the alpaca business. Do I have any regrets about going through those hardships with the alpacas? Absolutely not! We have all our alpacas in good health and, even though we didn't get to do all we had anticipated during the past year, we did accomplish several milestones we had set for ourselves. One of the major things that we didn't get done was get our barn built, but that was because our house in Huntsville is still on the market. However, the alpacas are doing just fine using their temporary shelters as a buffer against the elements, so, no big deal. The important thing is that we are still here, our alpacas are still here, and we are looking forward to the coming year with anticipation that it will be a better year for us all...