Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Enough Winter Already

It is March 17th and the main sliding barn doors are still frozen into the ground. Since the beginning of January we have had to use an alternate entrance into barn. The inconvienence is biggest when need to carry the 25KG feedbags through two gates while not letting dogs in or alpacas out. The second pain is the light switch of course is near the main doors not the side entrance which means you need a flash light for those early mornings or late evenings. In our 6 years in Nova Scotia we have never experienced a winter this cold for this long. We used to often get a week of rain after a week of cold which I previously hated as it always ruined the snow for skiing. A week of rain a couple of times to melt the snow this year would have been a blessing since we still have a foot or more cover in all but the most exposed places.

Saturday, March 14, 2009

Cria school

Halter training has been completed and the cria are used to wearing the halters now. The next steps are lead training and then learning to lead.

Lead training will begin this weekend by attaching a length of inner tube to both the halters and a ring in the wall. The inner tube will allow some flexibility of movement along with restraint.

Spring shearing 2009 Volunteers?

We have our shearing date set this year for Saturday May 16, the weekend after the Mayflower show in PEI.



Adult volunteers are welcome to join in the fun. We will need hands to help hold animals on the shearing table, and helpers to collect, sort,skirt and bag the raw fleece as it comes off the alpacas. It's dirty work but lots of fun.



The day will start early, around 7:30 am and end with a barbecue.

Alfalfa pellet fun

We have one girl, Wyonna who is looking a little thin. After some research we determined that alfalfa is a good way to add weight. Alfalfa hay is not readily available in our market so we opted for pellets.

I gave Wyonna some this morning and after about two bites she began to choke. Oh, no! Not again. I stroked her long neck with great force to try and dislodge the stuck pellet and after a few minutes she appeared to be fine.

The pellets are a good size and perhaps this was the problem. Instead of feeding them whole I decided to put the pellets in a bowl and wet them to soften them up. While this did work (you need a good amount of water) Wyonna was not very interested. Apparently alfalfa is not very palatable.

Next step was to mix a handful of the sweet feed ration in with the mushy alfalfa and this was a hit. Hopefully this will do the trick.

Monday, March 9, 2009

Shot giving day

Sunday was shot giving day. We gave all fifteen alpacas their quarterly Ivermectin shot and a couple of cria their Tasvax shot. We were able to get 14 of the 15 on the scale for a weighing. Only Kiana decided it was not for her and stubbornly dropped into a cush position and would not be moved. Even the alpaca mash would not coax her into stepping on the scale. She would only bound across it, much too fast to obtain a weight reading. While some are hesitant to go on the scale, once on they seem to enjoy the extra height (3 inches) and looked around. Afterwards when we were leaving they were going back on the scale by themselves.

The only casualty was Caroline who jabbed herself with a needle.

Monday, March 2, 2009

Better Living Show Results

Unfortunately our participation at the Better Living Show in Halifax was not a success. Less than 5000 people came through the doors and that was far less than the expected attendance. Those who did attend the show seemed to be disappointed with the overall appearance and types of vendors, thus they were not in a buying mood. In the end, sales did not cover the cost of the booth. We had additional frustration as the wireless Internet system did not seem to work with either of our laptops making the few credit card sales difficult. We will have to look at that in the future.

We had positive comments on our display from other vendors and the publice was very interested in the products which was a good sign. The alpaca duverts drew good interest and hopefully this will result in future sales.

Things that we learned:

  • Bring your own dolly/cart to move your boxes. Makes setup and take down much easier as it can be done in only a couple of trips from the truck. We found a good one a Canadian tire.
  • The 10x10 space was a little small.
  • Bring more pictures of the alpacas.
  • Everyone liked the box of raw fleece that they could touch.
  • Need a rack so you can hang certain items.
  • Create a tally sheet so that keeping track of cash sales on small items is easy. Hard to really know how many finger puppets were sold.
  • You definitely need two people all the time so that you can take a break. Caroline had a friend help on Saturday but was all alone on Sunday as I had to many things to do back on the farm.

An unsuccessful 3 day show make a long weekend with not enough rest. I am sure Caroline will have more to add.