The phones and PC have been vying for my attention all morning.... taking it in turns to send out various electronic warbles and other noises wherever I go.

Anyway moving on....all the other alpacas on the farm are looking fine and healthy today which is great news. I can only think that Felinas sudden death yesterday was as a result of some chronic illness. But that's just speculation on my part, as we won't know the full answer until we get the results back from the lab.

Our alpaca veterinary Dr Leslie Richardson will be out tomorrow bright and early to conduct ultrasounds and exams on four of our female alpacas before we ship them off for breedings at the end of the month...once they have been shorn. Speaking of which we have a great list of volunteers to help with alpaca shearing this year. The Ideal Alpaca Community website is now in really good shape and has some very useful tools when it comes to shearing time and preparing paperwork for the submission of samples to Yocom McCall wool testing laboratories.

We are almost out of micro-chips and I have been looking at the new micro-chips which not only tell you the chip serial number but also the temperature of the animal (to within half a degree). All very exciting but of course more expensive and the first task is to make sure that my chip reader is compatible with the new chips.....otherwise I am looking at $490 for a new chip reader which is no small investment.....

The peple at AuSable Valley Alpacas have been very helpful and if you are interested in bio-thermal chips I can recommend them to you.

Today is also the start of the irrigation season so we are running water into the south end the hay field and tomorrow we will start to irrigate the pastures which we will keep active this summer. I have decided not to use the two far alpaca pastures this summer so will concentrate on spraying the various weeds such as star thistle and keep the alpacas out.

Well better get somemore work done now that the phones are having a break.....

Adrian Stewart - click here to go to Muberry Alpacas

Late yesterday one of our production females a 7 year old dark brown female alpaca called Ms Felina literally dropped dead.

I took her body to Crater Animal Clinic straight away and the on call vet did a necropsy last night which revealed no clear indication for the cause of death. Tissue samples will be sent off to see what can be discovered.

Obviously its important to determine if the cause of death is in any way infectious. But I doubt it as we have had no other alpacas visit the farm for some weeks now.

I am considering using her body to produce a wired skeleton which may sound grim but would be useful for many people and it is such a waste that dead animals including alpacas are simply thrown into a landfill in this part of the world.

This way she will continue to be a useful teaching aid for many years to come.

The idea first came to me when I was at UC Davis where they have a llama skeleton, I was with Dr Richardson our alpaca vet and we discussed doing this the next time we had a suitable donor alpaca..


Adrian Stewart - click here to go to Mulberry Alpacas

Exciting News from one of our clients

Bob and Regina Dart sent a very exciting e-mail today to say that Essie (Haze’s daughter) got FIRST PLACE in her juvenile white female class of 8…and White Female COLOR CHAMPION at the Alpacas in the Ozarks Show.

Regina said that " Judge Sharon Loner LOVED every bit of her!"

Its so satisfying when the alpacas you sell go on to produce show winning cria especially in the vert tough white yearling class.

Regina has promised to send a picture as soon as Bob gets back from the show. I will obviously post it in the Blog as soon as it arrives.

So why not take a look at the great breeding work that Bob and Regina are doing at Llano Soleado Alpacas
This link will take you to their site on AlpacaNation.

Adrian Stewart - Click here to go to Mulberry Alpacas

As a small boy growing up in England little did I know that the Bartlett Pears which were on every super market shelf probably came from the Rogue valley of Southern Oregon.

The Bartlett pear was developed in the 17th century by John Stair in England. Mr. Stair sold some of his pear cuttings to a horticulturist named Williams, who continued developing the Stair variety and renamed it Williams. After the Williams pear's seedlings crossed the Atlantic, a nurseryperson named Enoch Bartlett of Massachusetts renamed this traveling fruit Bartlett, which is the name it continues to be known as today.

Pears are still big business here in the Rogue valley and every year the locals celebrate the arrival of the pear blossom with a festival. Thats been going on for over 50 years

It all started back in 1954 when representatives of the Fruit Growers' League, Chamber of Commerce and the Merchants Association met to initiate an event during the spring blossom season. In that first years parade there were just ten floats.

By 1956 there were 100 floats and the festival included a 30-mile tour of the Rogue valley's pear orchards. Pear Blossom Festival parade marshals have included many celebrities including in 1960 John F. Kennedy.

This year will be the 54th parade and there are over 150 entrants with over 5,000 participants.



There aren't any alpacas scheduled to be in this years parade, but maybe that is something I can remedy in next years parade....sounds like some serious alpaca halter training could be on the cards.

We are expecting rain on the farm tomorrow but today has been very pleasant at 68 degrees, with no wind to speak of.

Time to start getting prepared for alpaca shearing in two weeks time. So we need to get all the fleece bags labelled and organise volunteers to help sort and weigh the fleece as we take it off.

I will be bringing in alpacas from other farms nearby so that also needs to be organised in such a way that we don't need to quarantine the alpacas.

We will be taking samples from all the alpacas in order to submit the results onto the IAC database to be used to compile the EPD's (estimated progeny differences ) for the reference sires that we in the Ideal Alpaca Community (IAC) use.

Adrian Stewart - click here to go to Mulberry Alpacas

Despite telling everyone that spring is here...last night the temperature dropped and this morning there was snow above 3500 feet.



It came as quite a shock to the system and the warm winter clothes has to be hastily recovered from the chest in the boot room, where they spend their summer vacation.

Outside the alpacas looked relieved being almost in full fleece the recent temperatures of around 80 degrees had been proving very warm. So the overnight icy blast was a pleasant relief.

Now that the spring grass is underway they are just not eating enough of their feed supplements (grain) so I need to think about restricting their access to the spring grass somewhat.

We also managed to persuade Camilla that her rabbit would be much happier outside now that spring was here and the sun shining.....so we had to cobble together a kind of hutch to hold her rabbit cage. We just used whatever scrap was lying around and I don't expect it will win any design awards but it is nothing if not functional.



I am responsible for vet check of alpacas at the forthcoming alpaca show AlpacaMania 2007 so I have been busy today exploring the world of digital thermometers and how practical it would be to use them with alpacas at vet check....no one appears to know so I plan to conduct a small trial on my own alpacas to test the accuracy of the thermometer and its practicality....do alpacas really hate having things pocked into their ears?

Adrian Stewart - click here to go to Mulberry Alpacas

Leslie the alpaca vet was here again and doing the final vet certificate for Bandelier to travel to his new home in New Mexico via the GWAS show in Denver Colorado......quite a long way for a little guy on his first trip....
He did not like having a chip put under the skin behind his ear but was fine about everything else. For his trip to Colorado he needs a shot of Ivermectin or similar within 21 days of travelling. Apparently its to prevent the transmission of scabies.....you live and learn.....I didn't even know scabies was a problem in alpacas.

Leslie also took a look at Gifford the Australian Shepherd who is suffering from bad skin allergies despite being on an allergen free diet.....the next step is to try a "pulse" dose of anti-biotics....poor old Gifford.

The irrigation system is now being flushed out prior to starting in earnest with irrigation in the early part of next week sometime.



The weather has been quite mixed today with a good scattering of April showers..each one timed to arrive just after you are convinced that its safe to leave the truck window open! Then the sun pops out and you get the most amazing rainbows.....

I am now going to collect the anti-biotics for Gifford and some wall charts to help with the planning of the irrigation and pasture rotation.

Adrian Stewart - click here to go to Mulberry Alpacas

Macario volunteered to take the bee swarm out of the tree this morning.....well who am I to argue?

I couldn't decide if it is one of my colonies that has relocated or if it is a new colony forming around a new queen.








The bees weren't at all happy about being moved and the leather bee keeping gloves were literally bristling with bee stings by the time he took them off. However, there had been a mild frost and the cold does appear to slow them down considerably....a bit like me really!

Today we are rotating the alpacas into different pastures so that we can complete spraying the fence lines and get ready to start the irrigation cycle. This year I am determined to get into a weekly cycle so that there is a totally predictable routine to what gets watered and when.

Adrian STewart - click here to go to Mulberry Alpacas.

Well I am sure you have guessed it isn't the alpacas that are swarming...but our last colony of bees.

Over the winter we lost three out of four of the bee colonies, a picture reflected across the whole country....now today our last colony has decided to move into a nearby tree.



From a distance it just looks like a birds nest but when you get up close you can see it is just one heaving mass of bees.



My local bee keeping expert tells me that the trick is to locate one of our empty hives underneath, take off the roof, make sure it is attractive to the bees with some honey comb in, then saw through the branch allowing it to fall onto the bee hive. He tells me it works every time.....

What could possibly go wrong? Don't answer that.......I will tell you what happens tomorrow.

Meanwhile its time to feed the alpacas and contemplate my fate with the bees.

Adrian Stewart - click here to go to Mulberry Alpacas

Easter Sunday

Its almost beyond the last frost of the year...but not quite. Still we have been planting out potatoes and onions and setting up some irrigation for the vegetable garden.



On the deck outside my office I have set up bags of potting compost and frames in which I will grow tomatoes. All they will get is water from the irrigation pipe which runs round the deck.



The water which runs around the deck also supplies a couple of other water users.






Well thats about all from the alpaca farm today. Time to go hunting for Easter Eggs.....

Adrian Stewart - click here to go to Mulberry Alpacas

The weather was lovely again today and we blitzed the workshop and the barb giving everywhere a really good clean. By the end of the morning we were filthy and the barn and workshop were spotless.

There has been some talk among members about the article which appeared in the Wall Street Journal last week on alpacas. It was an okay article in many respects but towards the end it referenced the article which came out of UC Davis some months ago.

The article however turns out to have had a silver lining for part of the article it mentioned tax breaks. And sure enough we had a farm visit today from a local business man who is interested in alpacas because of the tax breaks he read about in the Wall Street Journal...another farm we know had the same result and they actually sold four alpacas to someone who read the article in the Wall Street Journal.

As my old mum says "every cloud has a silver lining".....



And as more than one notorious celebrity has said "there is no such thing as bad publicity".

Adrian Stewart - click here to go to Mulberry Alpacas

Yesterday a violent electrical storm came in from nowhere and took out the power so the Blog didn't happen. Sorry folks.



Adrian Stewart - click here to go to Mulberry Alpacas
Everything is back to normal now....if you can call this lifestyle normal!

Peruvian cotton and alpaca wool were the stars of a fashion show presenting the new 2007 autumn-winter collection of Italian brands ‘United Colors of Benetton’ and ‘Sisley’ in Lima, Peru.
The fashion items, which are expected to make a big impact in Europe, were mostly casual-wear with full, bright typical Peruvian colors, predominantly orange, fuchsia, purple, green and yellow.

Luciano Benetton said in an interview “Peru will always be a source of inspiration for us. In this collection the country of Peru is present in all our brands and styles through the raw materials we used for our designs like cotton and wool, especially alpaca.”
It is not the first time that Luciano has visited Peru. He revealed that on two occasions he visited several towns in the Peruvian Andean mountains searching for high-quality wools like alpaca and vicuña to bring his designs to life.



Meanwhile back on the farm the sun is shining and its 80 degrees outside. Thank goodness its shearing day on Sunday the 29th...anyone want to come and help out?

Adrian Stewart click here to go to Mulberry Alpacas

After 8 hours of deliberations, the Federal Jury in the U.S. District Court, Cleveland decided to award $1.6 million to Magical Farms and $30,000 to Majestic Meadows Alpacas.

The Jury opted to use the valuation of approximately $14,000 per head provided by the Land O' Lakes expert witness, the Harvard educated economist, Stephen Buffo.

The two ranches had sought $12.3 million from Land O'Lakes Farmland Feed and its parent company, Land O'Lakes Inc. They based that figure on what they said was the value of the alpacas that were killed and the diminished value of alpacas exposed to the tainted feed that survived.

Land O'Lakes, which admitted the feed was contaminated, had proposed an award of $1.1 million. Which both farms had rejected.

With regard to the alpacas that ate the poisoned feed but did not die the jury awarded no financial damages at all. Which is something of a surprise to me but that's juries for you.

"This was definitely a clean win for the defense," defense attorney Lawrence Sutter said after the verdict was announced.

The three-week trial pivoted on how to determine the fair market value of the animals.

In a blistering closing argument, Sutter pointed to instances in which Magical Farms claimed particular lost alpacas were worth hundreds of thousands apiece, when they had been purchased for much less. One alpaca that Magical Farms said was worth $325,000 had been purchased for $18,000 five years before it died.


Adrian Stewart click here to go to Mulberry Alpacas

Its always great when you sell an alpaca or two but you know I really do hate to see them go...they become part of the family after a while....maybe they aren't so dumb after all!

This morning Macrio and I started getting the irrigation systems set up to water the alpaca pastures and all the filters cleaned and joints checked before the irrigation canal springs to life in a couple of weeks time.



Then I was able to tackle a virtual mountain of paperwork. The tax return should be completed on Monday with some luck and a strong tail wind.

Meanwhile the jury in the Land O'Lakes case have retired to consider the evidence and arrive at a verdict. All very exciting stuff...don't you agree?

Ah well back to reality for me its time to feed the alpacas.....then off to wish Craig a very happy birthday. You may remember Craig was on the barn roof doing some repairs for me last week...what a hero he is.

Adrian Stewart Click here to go to Mulberry Alpacas

I get the distinct feeling that spring is now here and that we are safe from the last frosts of winter...hooray!



In our small and growing orchard the peach trees are looking very promising and I just hope there is some correlation between the amount of blossom on a tree and the amount of fruit that it eventually yields.

The alpacas are doing fine and the grass in the alpaca orchards is now growing so quickly that they can't keep up with it....it is almost impossible to have the perfect balance but its fun trying....

Today we have been mowing lawns, strimming the edges and generally tidying up as well as spraying broad leaf weed killer in the areas where the alpacas do not have access.

And of course cleaning up the inevitable piles of alpaca poop.

This afternoon I have to write my column for the UK Alpaca magazine. So I will be chained to the PC for the next few hours.... while the alpacas enjoy the spring grass and spring sunshine.

Adrian Stewart - click here to go to Mulberry Alpacas