Most of the the time the Alpaca Registry does a great job of handling the thousands of transactions and corrections that come its way every month.

But try and go off the beaten path and you are in for a very hard time.

A case in point is an alpaca boy that I sold to some alpaca breeders this spring. He wasn't registered but I didn't think for one moment that would be a problem. The owner of the stud signed off on his registration and the DNA matched his parents BUT the owner of the dam at time of breeding can longer be traced she has gone out of the industry.

This is causing an almost insurmountable barrier to registration and the new owner has now reverted to me to try and sort out the situation.

The only route open to me is to petition the board to allow a variation in policy in this instance. It sounds like an open and shut case to me as we have the DNA match so the signature is something of a formality in my humble opinion.

But we shall see and I will keep you posted on the outcome of my petition to the board of ARI.

Adrian Stewart

The Oregon State University Small Farms Program has just released its first issue of Oregon Small Farm News. It will be published online each quarter. The News includes information for both commercial small farms as well as non-commercial small acreages. Topics focus on organic/biological farming, conventional farming, marketing methods and resources, land stewardship, and more.

The contents for the current issue are:

Top Ten Things I Learned about Buying a Small Farm
Organic Fertilizer Calculator: A new planning tool
Finding Market Information for Agricultural Products
Winter’s Coming Don’t Get Stuck in the Mud!
Is Agroforestry Appropriate for your Small Farm?
Keep the Compost Cooking this Winter
Selenium Fertilization of Forages

Plus a calendar of upcoming events and a variety of resources of interest
Take a look at Oregon Small Farm News, and click on the newsletter icon. You can then examine a copy.



Adrian Stewart

I have seena n increasing number of church nativity plays including alpacas this year. From Dallas Texas to Manchester England people are using alpacas to represent the camel that we all associate with the three wise men.

Here is just one example from a church Texas:

"The live Nativity presentation will be held in a 40-by-80-foot heated tent with a capacity for 150 to 200 people, he said. Live donkeys, hens, doves and "camel family" animals such as alpacas will be part of the dramatization."

So contact your local church and you may just land a leading role for your favourite alpaca this Christmas. The question I am pondering is whether watching your alpaca perform the nativity is more or less stressful than watching your children or grand children?



Adrian Stewart

Home depot has opened a new store in our area and never having been to a Home Depot I was kind of curious. My initial visit worked out really well as I bought two solar powered lights to go inside the new alpaca loafing sheds.

They were very easy to install and once they have had three days of sunshine to charge up the batteries we can start using them





Not sure yet exactly what their performance will be like but I will report back as always.

Adrian Stewart

The jockey wheels for the rake have arrived. I was just starting to wonder where they might be and then noticed they were already fitted.
The local John Deere dealer really is very good at just getting on with things even if you aren't around to sign anything or pay anything. Brilliant!




Adrian Stewart

Not original but the alpaca version is all my own work.

ECONOMICS AND CULTURAL DIFFERENCES EXPLAINED --- USING ALPACAS:

SOCIALISM:
You have 2 alpacas, and you give one to your neighbour.

COMMUNISM:
You have 2 alpacas. The State takes both and gives you one fleece.

FASCISM:
You have 2 alpacas. The State takes both and sells you their fleeces.

NAZISM:
You have 2 alpacas. The State takes both and shoots you.

BUREAUCRATISM:
You have 2 alpacas. The State takes both, shoots one, shears the other, then burns the fleece ...

TRADITIONAL CAPITALISM:
You have two alpacas. You sell one and buy a stud. Your herd multiplies, and the market booms. You sell them and retire on the income.

AN AMERICAN CORPORATION:
You have two alpacas. You sell one to buy a new car, and force the other to produce the fleece of four alpacas. Later, you hire a consultant to analyse why the alpaca has dropped dead.

A FRENCH CORPORATION:
You have two alpacas. You go on strike, organise a riot, and block the roads, because you want three alpacas.

A JAPANESE CORPORATION:
You have two alpacas. You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary alpaca and produce twenty times the fleece. You then create a clever alpaca cartoon image called Pacamon and market it world-wide.

A GERMAN CORPORATION:
You have two alpacas. You genetically re-engineer them so they live for 100 years, eat once a month, and shear themselves.

AN ITALIAN CORPORATION:
You have two alpacas, but you don't know where they are. So you decide to have a long lunch.

A RUSSIAN CORPORATION:
You have two alpacas. You count them and learn you have five alpacas. You count them again and learn you have three alpacas. You count them again and learn you have two alpacas again. You stop counting alpacas and open another bottle of vodka.

A SWISS CORPORATION:
You have five thousand alpacas that ARI don’t know about. None of them belong to you. But you charge the owners top dollar for agisting them.

A CHINESE CORPORATION:
You have two alpacas. You have 300 people shearing them. You claim that you have full employment, and high fleece productivity, you arrest the man who wrote a Blog saying this wasn’t true..

A BRITISH CORPORATION You have two alpacas. But because of a fibre surplus the Government gives you a grant not to shear the alpacas, so the European Union Agricultural Diversification Unit gives you an interest free loan to open a petting zoo. The Health and Safety Executive forbid visitors to touch the alpacas. You file for bankruptcy and sue the Government using Legal Aid.

IRAQI CORPORATION:
Everyone thinks you have lots of alpacas. You tell them that you have none. No-one believes you, so they bomb the hell out of you and invade your country looking for the alpacas. You still have no alpacas so the Americans give everyone an alpaca and tell you that’s Democracy.

HONG KONG CORPORATION:
You have two alpacas. You sell three of them to your publicly listed company, using letters of credit opened by your brother-in-law at the bank. Then you execute a debt/equity swap with an associated general offer so that you get all 4 alpacas back, with a tax deduction for keeping 5 alpacas. The fleece rights of 6 alpacas are transferred via a Panamanian intermediary to a Cayman Islands company secretly owned by the majority shareholder. He sells the rights to all seven alpaca fleeces back to the listed company, and the proceeds from the sale are deferred into the following tax year.. The annual report says that the company now owns 8 alpacas, with an option on one more. Meanwhile, you kill the 2 alpacas because the feng shui is bad.

NEW ZEALAND CORPORATION:
You have two alpacas. The one on the left looks very attractive.

AUSTRALIAN CORPORATION:
You have two alpacas. Business seems pretty good. You close the farm and go surfing, then drink a few beers to celebrate.

Here are just a few pictures from the barn dance we held in the alpaca barn last Saturday.







You really don't have to be able to dance to square dance, its not there isn't movement and coordination required , there is. But what you don't need is a sense of rhythm. So as our caller pointed out to the reluctant onlookers if you walked into the barn then you can square dance. And he was right.


Adrian Stewart

The final alpaca drinking trough design is now working well. Basically the more hygienic vinyl pipe is insulated and then to stop the alpacas nibbling at the insulation the pipe is wrapped in plastic protector.



The autumn cria all now growing in leaps and bounds here is Bandelier now about 10 weeks old with mother Minne. He was sired by Studmaster Brunello.




Adrian Stewart

The alpaca loafing sheds are now completed apart from a few finishing touches and not a moment too soon. As no sooner had we put the last roof panels on and the wind came up and blew a gale all night long.



I wanted to say something about the construction but construction is really too grand a word. Assembly is much more precise.



As you can see the metal frames are held together in the same way that scaffolding is assembled and the plywood panels then screw into place.
The completed article is pretty impressive but not totally windproof as there are gaps between the panels and the frame.

The question now is whether we put enough screws into the roof panels to hold them in place, I will know the answer tomorrow morning.

Adrian Stewart

What an incredible day for sunrises and sunsets, but more of that later.

The drive had its annual renewal of 3/4 minus rock today and now looks almost respectable compared to how it looked yesterday.

We put the first roof on the first loafing shed and will do the second roof tomorrow.
It is quite a bit more difficult to screw through sheet metal into tubular steel than it is to drill through sheet metal into a flat piece of timber. But with a little bit of practice and some careful planning it is possible...






Well I was always taught "red in the morning sailors warning, red at night shepherds delight".

So I am utterly confused and will have to rely on the weather forecast that arrives on my PC each day, Which reminds me in the last issue of Alpacas magazine there was an excellent article on weather forecasting. If you haven't recycled it I suggest you find it and give it 5 minutes of your time.

Adrian Stewart

After her little holiday at Pucara International Navidad is now safely home and has once again established her authority in the alpaca herd. She is the matriarch.

Our sick girl is now on the road to recovery according to the latest blood tests so if all goes well she should be back in with the herd by Christmas. This is excellent news and there is a deep satisfaction in nursing a sick alpaca back to health don't you agree?

All the late born cria are doing well and gaining weight as expected.

Robyn Kuhl a fellow breeder has started a new venture with Carrie Hull called Coarse Broads.

Coarse Broads driving and exciting goal is to promote and develop a fiber based industry that is creating products using all grades of alpaca, thereby maximizing North American Fiber for North American Alpaca Producers. Foremost on our agenda is educating North American Alpaca Producers about profit opportunities, uses for fiber, and the expanding and viable American market that is available today.




Adrian Stewart

I am travelling to Pucara International today to see Al and Jude and collect one of my top females who has been bred to Snowmas Perfection.

Adrian Stewart

Isn't that a great name for a three sided shed? Alpaca loafing Sheds I think loafing is a great word to describe those endless hours spent chewing cud and looking about that alpacas get up to.....definitely loafers.



The loafing sheds are now erected and the wooden walls in place as you can see in this early morning picture where the moon is still visible....not sure what the temperature was but it was definitely cold!

The wood has now been stained and the roof of the first shed installed so they should be in active service before the end of the week.




When I was planning the sheds I spent quiet a bit of time checking the orientation of the proposed shed relative to the prevailing winds and the summer sun....however in the real world a flat piece of land away from the irrigation becomes a priority. The difference between theory and practice I suppose.

Adrian Stewart

Its always the sign of a good time when you tell yourself "never again" well thats my view on the matter. So suffice to say last night was most enjoyable.

What I have been trying to discover is what happened at the BelleauWood auction last night. This was a new alpaca auction promoted by Celebrity Sales and to all intents and purposes looked reasonable. The average selling price of $17,000 which strikes me as much lower than usual but of course there are always challanges with starting a new auction. So we will have to wait and see what next year produces.

Adrian Stewart

Suffice to say a fun time was had by all at the barn dance and I will get my hands on some pictures eventually.....

Adrian