As the person who tends to take all the pictures of alpacas around here I very rarely end up in any alpaca pictures myself so when Rhoda Preacher came to the farm to take pictures for the alpaca farm article in this months Hobby Farm magazine it was an opportunity for me to be on the other side of the lens for a change.

Here I am strolling through one of the alpaca pastures with a bucket of feed so no surprise that the alpaca boys are following me. The way to an alpacas heart is through its stomach.



In this next alpaca picture I am relaxing with Gfford my Australian Shepherd. He is a herd dog by nature but knows that alpacas although herd animals do like to be herded.



Now why did I pick this alpaca picture I wonder...oh yes because its so cute you want to touch it.



Okay so this last photo doesn't actually include me but I couldn't resist putting it up because alpacas really are cute especially when they are baby alpacas or cria as we call them...which is of course only Spanish for baby and is to be expected when you realise that the vast majority of alpacas live in South America.

Apparently there is anecdotal evidence of a virus going around that affects alpacas. Here is a note issued by Bruce Nelson the president of CALPACA.

Dear CALPACA Membership:

Just a heads up for everyone. Apparently there is a widespread upper respiratory problem making it's way around. I am certainly not a vet, nor am I issuing any medical advise. I just wanted to make sure that you were aware, and ask you to pay close attention to your animals, especially any late term females.

If you see signs of running noses, coughing, or fever I would suggest that you contact your vet for their advise.

Bruce Nelson

If I hear anymore i will put it onto the blog. Meanwhile if anyone has any information that would be of value please send it my way so it can shared among our community. Ideally I am interested in situations where a veterinary has been involved and blood work was done.

As we head towards the year end don't forget the tax advantages of alpaca ownership can be significant and that we at Mulberry Alpacas have some great females for sale. We now offer finance on all our pregnant females making it so much easier to afford the breeding stock you need to become successful.

This morning I was very busy making sure everything was clean and tidy for a farm visit in the afternoon. So the at 11.30 the only thing between me and the farm visit was the Rugby World Cup semi final between England and France....

And yes Jonny Wilkinson once again did it for England ...the final score line:

France 9 England 14.....which means England are now through to final next weekend.



The farm visit was great fun and the two young children who came enjoyed feeding the alpacas and as always went away with alpaca coloring books, crayons and fibre samples to make bird nesting holders with... of course the highlight was stroking our one week old alpaca called ...Jonny Wilkinson !

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Adrian Stewart - click here to go to Mulberry Alpacas.
Click here to register for the Mulberry Alpacas Newsletter.

Its been one of those hard weeks where I was really quite glad when Friday came around.
This time next week I will be in the full throws of running vet check for our great annual alpaca show Alpacamania - the friendliest alpaca show in the world!
As I am organising the vet check I need to get some of the forms sorted out and printed in time for the exhibitors who start arriving first thing Friday morning.
Tomorrow England will be playing France in the semi finals of the Rugby World Cup....if you didn't know the English and the French have been fighting each other for the last 1000 years so it will be a tough match. France are the hosts for this years Rugby World Cup so they will be going all out to beat the England team.

Regular readers of the Blog will know that we named out last white cria of the year Jonny Wilkinson in honor of a great England rugby player......


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Adrian Stewart - click here to go to Mulberry Alpacas.
Click here to register for the Mulberry Alpacas Newsletter.

What! Salmon in Bear Creek? There can be! Our annual salmon festival is a great way tp learn more about how salmon benefit people and people benefit salmon in the Bear Creek Watershed.

This event offers activities for people of all ages to explore their connection with salmon. Through hands-on experiences with a variety of local organizations, participants can explore how salmon benefit people as a part of the food web (an indication of healthy water and a healthy watershed), as a cultural and artistic inspiration, and as a focus of recreational activities. Also, participants can learn some ways in which they can help protect and enhance salmon habitat - including water and energy saving ideas, eating sustainable salmon, planting native plants, cleaning up streams, stopping storm drain pollution, and purchasing salmon license plates. And, of course the star of the show — wild salmon — are on site to observe up close in the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife's 350-gallon salmon tank! Biologists were on-hand to answer ‘fishy’ questions.
Okay so maybe this isn't really anything to do with alpacas per se...but its what I did so its what I write about. Its the alpaca lifstyle !

Click here to take the Mulberry Alpacas survey.
Adrian Stewart - click here to go to Mulberry Alpacas.
Click here to register for the Mulberry Alpacas Newsletter.

Hot on the heals of my article on how to buy quality alpacas in Hobby Farms magazine comes a 6 page profile on Mulberry Alpacas and the alpaca farming lifestyle.



Its a pretty good article from Audrey Pravia who also wrote Horses for Dummies and equally good pictures from Rhoda Preacher. I mean to be honest they both performed wonders with the material they had to work with.
The Mulberry Alpacas competition has now come to a close so its time to pick the winner and mail out the book.

The weather has gone very wet and cold so my third cutting of hay is looking like a very long shot, a very long shot indeed. But my country friends say all is not lost and there is still the possibility of an Indian summer.

Click here to take the Mulberry Alpacas survey.
Adrian Stewart - click here to go to Mulberry Alpacas.
Click here to register for the Mulberry Alpacas Newsletter.

Recently I have been reading a book called 50 Places to Sail or some such name. I was "sailing" in Marblehead Massachusetts the other day and read about a local delicacy called Joe Froggers.

The Legend of Joe Froggers: A couple known as Aunt Crease and Black Joe lived at the edge of a pond in Marblehead, Massachusetts. Joe had fought in the Revolution as a young man. On election night, they would open their house, which on occasion was also a local tavern, and serve grog. Joe would play the fiddle and Aunt Crease would cook.

One of her specialties was a molasses cookie the size of a modern-day salad plate. She made them for fishermen, who found they stored well in barrels during long sea voyages.

In the early 1800s, the election took place at the end of May, a time when frogs were peeping in the pond, and by association the cookies were called Joe's Froggers. Over time the possessive was dropped, and the name today is Joe Froggers.



If you would like the recipe for edible alpacas a la Joe Frogger click here.

Meanwhile all is well on the farm and tomorrow I will be reporting on the latest edition of Hobby farm magazine and the profile on a certain alpaca farm..... enjoy your alpacas!

Click here to take the Mulberry Alpacas survey.
Adrian Stewart - click here to go to Mulberry Alpacas.
Click here to register for the Mulberry Alpacas Newsletter.

In 1492, Christopher Columbus set sail on a journey that changed the course of history. On Columbus Day, we celebrate this voyage of discovery and honor an Italian explorer who shaped the destiny of the New World.

He doesn't look very cheerful does he? But I guess if you are sitting for hours while some Italian artist sketches you then a smile is out of the question....only once we had invented photographs was it possible to capture a smile with minimum effort.

Which leads me into the subject of alpaca photographs. My Blog is an absolute goldmine of photographs but when I started the blog I simply indexed my pictures as Blog001.jpg, Blog002.jpg and so on... currently we are almost at Blog800.jpg ... oh well you get the idea.
But I now see that I really should have called them alpacas.jpg and so on. Unless they have an accuraet description then the search engines just ignore them.....

A few weeks ago we tried this and our first image has now made it onto the first page of Google while the farm is hanging out at the top of page two. So now we have loaded up some more images and we will see what happens.

Click here to take the Mulberry Alpacas survey.
Adrian Stewart - click here to go to Mulberry Alpacas.
Click here to register for the Mulberry Alpacas Newsletter.

Our latest and last arrival of the year is doing just fine.



Being a white cria he show up very clearly against his brown mother. She was a maiden so this is her first cria and she is doing a superb job, she is so happy to be a statue while Jonny fills up at regular intervals.



Even though he has weighed in at a pretty skinny 14lbs he is very confident and like most alpacas naturally curious. Here he is checking out the feed bucket we had during a farm visit earlier today.

Well thats the end of the weekend and the week is already filling up with appointments, tasks and chores. Where do the days go to.

Click here to take the Mulberry Alpacas survey.
Adrian Stewart - click here to go to Mulberry Alpacas.
Click here to register for the Mulberry Alpacas Newsletter.

We all know that the majority of alpacas are born before noon.....so once you are into the afternoon and you are on baby watch you can relax.... right?

Wrong...that's just the alpaca louring you into a false sense of security. Which is why one of our lovely females called Latte popped out a beautiful white boy (I know we would all like girls but it doesn't always go that way) at almost 5 in the afternoon.



Now earlier in the day a miracle of almost equal proportions had occurred in Marseilles, France. What was this miracle I hear you ask... In France right now the Rugby World Cup is underway and England the reigning world champions were scheduled to play Australia (the team we beat in the final four years ago to become world champions) Australia were the strong favourites, we were and lets be fair about this expecting to lose. But not so the England Rugby team who are made of sterner stuff and after 80 minutes of play England emerged victorious.

Once again just as in the final, four years ago the kicking skills of Jonny Wilkinson had helped secure an English victory... I hope by now you have figured out the relevance of this story and exactly where we are headed....... No! Well you will have to be patient and read on then.



Mother and new arrival were put into the pen so they could get to know each other and I could fuss around with a hair dryer warming up the new arrival and drying out his coat. He was pure white but splashed with bright red blood from the umbilical cord. It almost looked like the England rugby strip....... he was soon up and about looking for supper.



Have you worked it out yet?

Our new arrival is to be called Jonny Wilkinson ...Jonny Wilko for short....a national hero.

Check out the Mulberry Alpacas finance options
Click here to take the Mulberry Alpacas survey.
Adrian Stewart - click here to go to Mulberry Alpacas.
Click here to register for the Mulberry Alpacas Newsletter.

3B is a great way to own and enjoy alpacas without having to wait until you have a property of your own to start alpaca farming. You probably already know that owning a horse doesn’t mean that you have to own a stable and hundreds of rolling cares. Well it’s just the same with alpacas you would be surprised how many people own alpacas without moving to the country.



While 3B is almost certainly the friendliest alpaca boarding scheme around, it isn’t the cheapest because it includes all the usual services plus shearing your alpacas each year and then processing their wonderful fiber into superb knitting yarn for your personal use.

Each year you will receive around 3 lbs of knitting yarn from each of your alpacas, which would typically retail for about $120.00. You can sell the yarn or knit garments for friends and family whatever takes your fancy.
Your boarding also includes:

Use of our free range pastures which are all irrigated in the summer months to ensure a constant supply of nutritious grass.
In winter your alpacas diet is supplemented with hay from our own hay field. This is hay is laboratory tested to ensure it meets our own high standards.
Feed supplements especially formulated to compliment the grass and hay found in the Pacific North West.
Regular cutting of toe nails and inspection, including weights and body condition scores. All of which are recorded to create a comprehensive health record for your alpaca.
* All necessary veterinary protocols for control of parasites and to ensure a healthy and happy life.

If you are into alpacas but haven't got your own place 3B is the easy way to get into the pleasure of alpaca ownership....interested?

Drop me a line its that easy.

Click here to take the Mulberry Alpacas survey.
Adrian Stewart - click here to go to Mulberry Alpacas.
Click here to register for the Mulberry Alpacas Newsletter.

With the exchange rate between the Dollar and the Euro and Pound at record lows now is a great time to be doing some marketing into Europe...where they know that now is the time to buy some top US genetics.

Back in year 2000 100 Euros would only have bought you $92.50 of alpaca spending power. Today 100 Euros will buy you $142 of alpaca spending power...that's right an increase of almost 55% in 6 years.

Back in 2000 100 Pounds Sterling would have only bought you $144 of alpaca spending power.
Today 100 Pounds Sterling will buy you $204 of alpaca spending power....an increase of 42% in 6 years.

If you are brave enough to offer them finance on the alpacas as well then you have a very powerful argument. Think about it!

Food for thought I think don't you?

Bye for now happy farming Adrian Stewart

Things on the alpaca farm must be hectic as I have allowed the blog to slide almost silently into October without so much as a passing comment. We have been doing quite a bit of work on the main website...but goodness knows there is so much to do.
So in case you haven't looked around recently here are some short cuts:

All about Adrian and Jo and their alpaca farm.
Information about alpacas.
Alpacas here are some frequently asked questions.
And last but not least on this short guide to just some of our web site here are the alpacas for sale.

The weather has been very wet today so at least the irrigation doesn't need my constant attention and it can't be long now before the irrigation canal shuts down for the winter.

This winter I would like to build some sort of device to stop weed from the canal getting into the intake to our system.... I have seen a few designs but haven't talk to the owners about just how effective they are. Maybe I should check out some alternative designs on the internet first.

Well thats about it for today as always if you have any questions whatsoever about alpacas please don't hesitate to contact us directly. See you very soon Adrian Stewart

Now that National Alpaca Farm Day is behind us and the dust is starting to settle our good neighbours in California turn out to be not so happy. This isn't because NAFD is a bad idea its because the dates picked by AOBA for NAFD clash with dates when the California Alpaca Breeders have their annual show in Monterey called the Pronk. Calpaca have a 5 year contract for the same weekend each year.

The bottom line is that in this huge country with its extremes of weather finding a weekend where there isn't a show and the climate is tolerable is just about impossible..... so something had to get squeezed and it looks like it was Calpaca....my thought is that they should move the calpaca show and that AOBA should pay for any costs of doing that.

Click here to take the Mulberry Alpacas survey.
Adrian Stewart - click here to go to Mulberry Alpacas.
Click here to register for the Mulberry Alpacas Newsletter.

The weather has certainly taken a turn for the colder this week and the trees are starting to change color. I am still optimistic about getting a third cutting of hay but that is based on the weather warming up one more time before the cold weather truly arrives.

Our pregnant girl is hanging on on there so now the doubts start creeping in about breeding dates and that is followed by a frantic review of records to see just how far out we might be..

Meanwhile we are busy topping the pastures one last time as the grass has become quite long in places and there are three main reasons for topping;
First it keeps the grass in the growth stage and so stops goodness going into the seed head.
Second alpacas do not like eating long grass for some reason
Third its much easier to collect the poop from short grass than long grass.

And if you didn't know collecting up the poop goes along way to controlling the parasite burden your alpacas are tolerating. You can't eliminate parasites in alpacas or any other livestock for that matter. But what you can do is reduce the parasite burden to a point where it has no impact on the alpacas well being.

Click here to take the Mulberry Alpacas survey.
Adrian Stewart - click here to go to Mulberry Alpacas.
Click here to register for the Mulberry Alpacas Newsletter.