I am getting too old to be doing 600 mile trips in one day with the trailer.....so just feeling a bit tired this morning after 12 hours of driving yesterday. I left home about 4.30 in the morning so just saw the end of the lunar eclipse which was pretty cool.



On the up side, I did get my two open females delivered for breeding and collected two of the four alpacas that were already up there for breeding.

Two female alpacas I had to leave behind, one because she is still open which is a bit of a puzzle and the other because the vet Dr Paul Jones thinks she may have a deformed fetus so he will do some more ultrasounds to determine if what he saw was an extra leg or if it was just the umbilical cord wrapped around the body. If it is an extra limb then we will terminate the pregnancy and breed her to a different male.

I had a good session with Mike Safley the owner of Northwest Alpacas and made a solid start on my project to try and forecast the national alpaca herd. I also spent time with Bill McAlister who handles the IT and internet side of the business which is always interesting.

Having spoken with a few of the larger farms there is definitely talk of the market being soft compared to this time last year. Which makes me wonder if there would be enough interest in creating a a simple quarterly survey that asks alpaca breeders if they think the economic climate is better or worse than the previous quarter and better or worse than the same quarter last year..... hmmm there is an idea.

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.
Click here to find out about National Alpaca Farm Day 2007.