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
