Its always reassuring when you see a new cria urinate. A very good indicator that she is getting fluids and that her kidneys are working just fine. Of course unless you are eagle eyed and watch them all day there is a certain amount of good fortune involved. But better lucky than rich as my old man used to say.



A new crias stools will be like tiny grains of rice so they are easy enough to spot on the ground. Speaking of alpaca stools I did take a sample from Lucy to the vet yesterday for a fecal test. Not because I thought she had worms particularly, but she just happened to deliver a sample as I walked past and I always keep a zip lock bag in my pocket when out in the alpaca paddock. They are extremely handy just for this very reason.

Well here we are at Wednesday half way through the week already and still one hundred and one things to do on the alpaca farm before I go on vacation for a few days.

Our new arrival is fine and is still called "Mia Sorella 08" until we can think of a new name for her. The sire is Paul Revere and I am very pleased with the results.



The vet will be coming out next Thursday to give the once over and draw some blood for the usual BVD test and a few drops for the DNA card required by ARI.

Well better get on there are some boys out there that need there toe nails trimming and time is moving right along.

Sometime in the last 12 hours Mia Sorella gave birth to a female cria....





The nights are quite chilly so a winter coat is a great idea at this time of year. If the temperature really gets up during the day then I will take it off but for now its a good precaution as small animals of any species are always susceptible to extremes of temperature and newborns may not have a fully functioning internal thermometer so better safe than sorry.

Meanwhile Minne continues to rebuff Conmans romantic overtures....

Our next door neighbor (if that's the correct term) has decided to sell I think! Well the place is on the market but at $10 million in the current climate it does look like something of a fishing trip to me. But who knows maybe some aspirational parent still in the grips of Olympic fever will snap it up in order to get his or her offspring into the Olympic team.

The property consists of an Olympic dressage arena that seats 300 people with attached clubhouse and gym. Grounds include a 1501 sq ft original farm house, 10 barns with 39 stalls including a veterinarian barn all fully fenced. Home site approval on the top of the knoll
with spectacular views of Ashland and the valley. Large pond, well with two holding tanks, and 33 acres of TID rights.

I have started to notice in the very few alpaca shows I see that there is a trend towards smaller more delicate looking alpacas...or maybe its just my imagination. Personally, I prefer the larger boned alpacas that have a good strong frame.

Why do I prefer the larger framed alapacs? Well its just a gut feel I have that the females can carry cria more easily and then birth more easily. Plus breeding can involve quite a bit of coercion from the male and I feel a larger alpaca is more able to take that.

Still I have no evidence to back any of this up its simply a personal preference.



Let me know what your thoughts are.

The temperature is unreasonably high at the moment and touching 110 degrees.
The alpacas seek out shade whenever it gets this hot and if at all possible will stand in the spray from the irrigation system to cool down.... which sounds like innocent fun but the irrigation water is full of microbes and tiny vegetable matter so this is not good stuff to be washing into your nice alpaca fleeces.....

Patches of the various pastures are drying out now and when that happens the grass almost dies before that pasture comes around for its next irrigation cycle. Bottom line it is essential to get every part of the pasture soaked when you do run an irrigation cycle.

Once the ground starts to dry out then the dreaded star thistles rear their spiky heads and appear to flourish on fresh air...the only way to get rid of them is to dig them out....it takes time but in the long run it saves a great deal of time and money. We have tried herbicides in the past but they are not very selective and the slightest wind will cause mayhem.

No sign of the cougar around the alpacas but I know they have huge territories so he could be anywhere and might return at any time.
The only vulnerability appears to be the wooden posts at the corners where the 8 foot tall no climb fence is supported so today I will make these a little bit more daunting and install some cheap and cheerful solar powered lights which will hopefully act as an additional deterrent.

I really must stop staying up until the early hours to watch the Olympics it is totally exhausting the next day.... but only myself to blame. Good news for Phelps not so good for the US ladies gymnastics team. But there is no shame in silver.

We will be breeding Minne the female alpaca with Conman again today for the third time so lets hope she is having none of it and spits him off in great style.

Yesterday Mac did an excellent job of weeding the vegetable garden under my expert guidance...however it turns out I had let him loose in an area freshly planted with seeds..whoops! I am now banned from the vegetable garden...until winter.

Time to mow the lawns and get the irrigation running so better go enjoy your day and thanks for visiting my alpaca farming blog.

Each year we fibre test every alpaca on the farm. What happens is that just before Alan Godsiff our New Zealand shearer makes his first cut along the alpacas back he takes a "sample" from the midsection of the alpaca.



As Angus McColl puts it:

The integrity of sampling, the careful and proper selection of a sample, is the most critical factor involved in measurement of fiber diameter in individual animals. The samples must be taken at the middle of the side in the blanket location. The sample should be uniformly cut at the skin level, which is the base of the staple, and should be no smaller than a two-inch square in size. The sample should be kept in the staple configuration, which is its natural growth state. It should not be brushed out, cleaned up, or folded. Flat bladed shears or clippers are recommended as the safest tools to use in the taking of samples.

This sample of alpaca fibre is then sent to Angus McColl at Yocom McColl fibre laboratory who sends you back the following report ( and an invoice ). To be accurate this is the report you receive if you are members of the Ideal Alpaca Community - the IAC report is more comprehensive than the standard Yocom McColl report.





Histograms are quite useful when it comes to looking at an alpacas fibre and making breeding decisions. To take this information to the next level is the work of the IAC and its quest to produce EPDs or Estimated Progeny Differences to give them their full title, for alpacas.
The work has been underway for some time now to calcu;ate EPDs and you can read more about what EPDs are the Mulberry Alpacas Library

Having discovered on Friday that Minne is open we started to breed her again today.



We will repeat this every week now until we get a spit off from Minne which should be a good indication that she is pregnant. She did spit off two weeks ago so I was fearing that she may have a retained CL which was fooling her into thinking she is pregnant. But the fact she went down so easily today makes me certain she is open.

A breeding each week is just about right as alpaca breeding causes some trauma to the female alpaca internally. What you want to avoid is breeding so frequently that you get bleeding. This is to be avoided for two reasons; firstly bleeding can lead to infection but also because blood is fatal for sperm...so even a good breeding can prove unsuccessful if blood is present in the uterus.

Several of you have asked more about growing lavender and how to get started. Well I am no lavender expert but here is some basic advice and a few references if you want to read more. How does this tie in with Alpacas? Well it doesn't directly but its all part of making the most of your farm. Alpaca or otherwise.

Lavender is a nice potential niche crop, although two things come to mind first. One is to really research the market for lavender and find out what you are actually going to do with the flowers – sell them dried, fresh, for oils, make soap, and so forth. Doing thorough market research and talking with potential buyers would be an important first step before planting lavender.

I’d also counsel anyone to proceed slowly and start with an acre or less and see how the plants do on your property, how the markets shape up, etc. It is risky to put in many hundreds of lavender plants without first having an adequate business plan and marketing plan in place.

It is also wise to start small and build from a small acreage if you find success with this crop.

There are a number of resources on the web.

The Oregon Small Farms website has some resources on lavender:

WSU has a whole page on production and marketing:

ATTRA has information on growing lavender as well:

Many thanks to Melissa Mathewson at the OSU Small Farms Extension
Southern Oregon Research & Extension Center

Dr Leslie Richardson was here today to ultrasound Minne , draw some blood and implant some microchips in younger alpacas.

And we were half way successful. We did ultrasound Minne but she turns out not to be pregnant so we will have to breed her again and then scan her again in 30 days or so.

Minne's new owner Bill was here with his father aslo called Bill to see the ultrasound and check up on the three alpacas that will be the start of a new alpaca herd once their barn is completed.





I am almost out of micros chips - in fact I am totally out of chips so better see what is happening to the bulk order that SOJAA were going to place...

Our 10 acre hay field is quite a bit of work and after all the cost of contractors yields only about $1500 each year even with two cuttings.

This is why I have been looking into Lavender production and out of interest here are the numbers I am playing around with:

Spacing between rows
Between rows: 4 ft., with a range of 3-6 ft
Between plants: 1-3 ft., 30" most common
3,000 - 5,000 plants per acre - 4,000 is about average.

Price of plants
Plugs: 128 plug tray $50-60, less for large quantities ($30-40).
2" pots: $3-$4 retail, $1.50-2.00 large quantities.
4" larger pots:- $4-$6, large quantities for around $3.00

This gives a total planting cost of about $10,000 with plugs and at the other exrtreme $120,00 for 4" pots.

The irrigation system would cost about $5,000 by the time it was complete. With drip irrigation it is VITAL to have a thorough filtering of the water or the drippers will clog up in no time.

Flower yields – Grosso
Approximately 150 stems per bundle
4-7 bundles per plant - 5-6 on average
12-15 bundles to yield a pound of dried buds
Buds per plant - 1/4 to 1/2 lb. per plant dried buds
Bundles per acre 4,000 x 5 = 20,000
Buds per acre: 1,000 - 1,500 pounds dried buds per acre

Oil production
Angustifolia's yield between 3 and 15 quarts of oil per acre (about 5 to 25 lbs.)
Lavandin's yield between 20 and 95 quarts of oil per acre (about 35 to 180 lbs.).

Wholesale prices for lavandin oil, are around $35/pint as far as I can make out.
Thus, on the wholesale market, lavandin varieties will generate around $2800 to $6650 per acre for oil production.

It is highly unlikely that most U.S. lavender producers can compete in the wholesale essential oil business with producers in some other parts of the world. Oil production for small US producers should be aimed at high quality, value-added markets.

Which is where our sister web sire Mulberry Health will come in handy.

Having run irrigation on the newly mown hay field this week it soon became apparent that the irrigation ditches were in need of some TLC (tender loving care).

This morning we set about cleaning out the ditches and of course having run water all day Monday and Tuesday they were kind of wet and muddy...so it was very important not to let the tractor slip in while ploughing (plowing for my American readers) the ditches.

Just as you should never think about the bunker in golf - you should never think about the ditch.....as it will draw you in like a magnet..



I jumped off - but I think there was little chance it would roll over, still...better safe than sorry.

Of course Macario thought it was hilarious and only stopped laughing when I tried to take his picture...



The tractor was rescued by the Expedition which when in 4 wheel drive low ratio will pull just about anything... a lesson learnt.

On those rare occasions when there isn't anything urgent or important and you get the chance to hang out with some of the alpacas then you remember why you were taken under their spell in the first place.



Even though there is masses of fresh grass the alpacas always like to chow down on some hay at the end of the day and working on the basis that a little of what you fancy does you good I make sure they can get hay if they want it.





In fact this alpaca is so special she may just tempt me into the show ring later this year.....time will tell....what am I saying...when am I ever going to have time to do halter training.....??

Isn't it always the way you watch and wait then as soon as you go into town for an hour or so the mun delivers her new cria. Its almost like they stand there waiting for you to go.

By the time we arrived home the baby was safely delivered and on his feet and Southern Cross had passed the placenta intact. The new boy was feeding just fine and enjoying the summer sunshine.



Southern Cross is black with a white beard and she was mated to Juan Pablo who is pure white so I was hoping for a white girl...in my wildest dreams... What actually arrived is a lovely brown boy with a white beard...fascinating really as that is just the same color pattern as Latte who is another Southern Cross progeny. Who was sired by El Toro (from Chile) so no genetic connection to Juan Pablo.

The new arrival is feeding at regular intervals and we have given his navel a good spraying so all is well on the alpaca farm ....... as always the remainder of the herd are fascinated by new arrivals.