Monday, June 22, 2009

Our first WWOOFers

Earlier this year we joined an organization called World Wide Opportunities on Farms (WWOOF). For the past week an Austrian couple (Clemens and Eva) have been staying with us and helping us out. They have been great. The two of them have helped with the weeding of the gardens, sorting the fleece from this years shearing, setting up feeders, planting and harvesting of early vegatables plus other odd jobs. We have also had them leading the alpacas and helping out when we gave the heard their quarterly needles.

In the spring time we often get behind on the additional chores as the alpacas keep us busier so their help has been most beneficial. Additionally we have enjoyed great conversations during and after dinner about their travels and life in both Canada and Austria.

On Sunday we took the two of them to the top end of the Annapolis Valley region to the Grand Pre Exhibit, Windsor, Wolfville and also visitied a few wineries. They found the Maple wine unique and the Best wine of the day was the Alchemy from L'acadie vinyards in the Gaspereau Valley. They are currently Nova Scotias only certified organic vinyard. The other two wineries we visited on sunday were Sainte-Famille and Gaspereau

Breeding Season Starts

Now that we are in the middle of June we have started breeding. This year we set up a temporary pen in the middle of the girls pasture. Kiana who we think reaborbed her cria during her choking problem in November was our known open female. She quickly went down for Perilli. As this was in the pasture the other females all came and checked out the situation. Most of the girls then walked away and kept a little difference.
Nikki though came by sniffed around and then cushed a few feet away from the fence. She then rolled around and after about 5 minutes got up and walked away. Nikki did have a positive Ultrasound in Junuary.
A bigger concern though is Sweet Dreams. She came up to the fence of the breeding pen about 15 minutes in and then cushed right next to the pen beside the mating couple. She stayed in this position until the end 15 minutes later as if waiting her turn. Immediately after we had led Perilli away Sweetdreams then went into the breeding pen and sniffed around for 5 minutes. This would be disappointing if Sweet Dreams reabsorbed as we had done an outside breeding for her last September. We have had no indications that she was stressed in away during the winter that would have caused the cria to be absorbed. Her ultrasound was mixed but the vet did have issue getting a good position on her compared to some of the other tests but at the time we were not concerned as she was spitting off well.

Thursday, June 11, 2009

Our first 2009 Cria



And it is a girl.

After 2 weeks with almost no rain. Sedona chooses to have her baby on a day with heavy and steady rain. Thankfully baby is doing fine with good temperature, teeth, 4 nipples and walking if not running around. She weighs in at 20.1 pounds.

Monday, June 1, 2009

Alpacas in the pool

In the summer to help keep alpacas cool we bought a few of the 1 foot deep hard plastic swimming pools for little kids. The alpacas will then go and lay in these pools to cool their legs and bellies. On Sunday being hot we were filling them up again as they had been emptied when we were moving the soil around. The girls have two pools and were in the first one as soon as the water started running. Meanwhile, SweetNS had climbed into the pool on the male cria section and layed down in it despite it being completely empty of water. I was quite funny to see him stay there for over 5 minutes. He would look over at us almost suggesting - Hurry up...I waiting for my swim.

Stuck in the Mud

Last weekend we had 3 loads of topsoil delivered to help the recovery of some ground near the barn. We had put down the winter manure and bedding mix and now wanted to cover it with a layer of soil before seeding. This will add another 4000 sqft of pasture for the cria section. On Thursday, Bill the local dairy farmer who helped pull out the dump truck last weekend came by with his front loader to move the soil from the dump spot to the locations I needed and smooth out a couple of old manure (now soil) piles.

It rained on Friday, so I waited to Saturday late afternoon before I started smoothing Bills small piles with my little tractor and blade. I was about 90% done on one the second area I was working on and found a very wet hole that was nicely covered up by soil. The entire rightside of the tractor went it and was not coming out under its own power. Caroline was not pleased and said I should have known better (which is true but I had the time and new I was pushing the limits and had lots to get done.)
I went up and got the 4 wheel drive truck hoping to tow it out. But this was unsucessful as well and ended up chewing up more ground. Caroline even was frustrated with my stupidity. I at least did not get the truck stuck and called it a night.

Sunday, thankfully, was sunny and hot which helped dry somethings some more. I waited until after lunch before tackling the job of digging out the tractor. I had dug around the tractor removing some of the soil from the driving path and was about to attempt another pull out with the hard earth now being dry. Tony our tenant though arrived and said that would still not work and we needed to jack up the tractor, stick wood underneath and then drive the tractor away. So I got the 2.5 ton jack, some 2X6 planks and a few big rocks to stop the jack from sinking under the weight. After an our we had got the tractor high enough to get to pallets under the right side and were able to drive the tractor away.

While I did not get the two other sections done for spreading, I at least finished this one and then mowed the lawn.

Alpacas in the pool