Hello dear readers and happy belated New Year!
Rather than writing about New Years resolutions that I know I won’t keep, I thought I would catch up on the big things that happened last year that I didn’t blog about.
Alpacas
Our herd is now up to 17 thanks to the two new boys that were born in the summer.
Patrick Henry is the third cria out of mom Malibu and we couldn’t be happier with him. His coloring is a rich brown with black points, meaning the tips of his ears, nose and toes are black. He has lovely long black lashes that any girl would envy and is just as sweet as could be.
Mom decided to wait until we were gone for the day, of course, to give birth, and by the time we got home he was up on his feet and nursing.
John Hancock was born in August, also when we weren’t home! First time mom, Ourania, did a great job and by the time we got home Hancock was working on getting up on his wobbly lanky legs.
2016 will be a busier alpaca year than we have had so far…6 of our moms are pregnant and assuming they all hold on to their crias until birth we will have little ones starting in May and going in to August!
Turkeys
In 2013 we started with six heritage breed Bourbon Red Turkey poults (babies) from our local feed store. From that small beginning, we went on to incubate our hen’s eggs in 2014 and 2015 and began to build our business of raising these lovely and tasty birds for breeding stock and for the holiday table.
Free ranging turkeys tend to get a little full of themselves. When you have a large flock and all the males get together, there is non stop strutting, displaying and gobbling, and just general juvenile showing off.
Turkeys are extremely curious. They will come up to you and give you this goofy one eyed pirate look as if to say “what’s up. what are you doing, can I help?”.
As of this posting, the hens have not yet started to lay, but once they do we will again start incubating.
Etsy Store
Another start for us in 2015 was our Etsy Store. This gave me an outlet to sell the yarn we had spun at a local Colorado mill as well as some vintage items and feathers from our birds. I did quite a bit of dyeing, which has been a great way to channel my creativity and late in 2015 added some yummy merino sock yarn, also hand dyed by me :).
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| Alpaca Yarn Midnight Aubergine Colorway |
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| Merino Sock Yarn First Light colorway |
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| Wool Yarn Autumn Colorway |
Puppies
Both of our girls, Belle and Boo, gave birth to litters a week and a half apart aahhgghh! Talk about poo hitting the fan, or in this case it hit the floor, the walls and every other place you can imagine!
Belle with her litter of nine.
She is a great, attentive mom. Knows just what to do with the puppies. If you have never raised puppies, then you might not know that one of the things that mom does is clean up after their elimination. I know, it sounds nasty, and it is, but it is quite normal. Belle is a bit enthusiastic about this job and many a puppy was flipped over in her zeal to clean their little behinds.
This was Boo’s first litter. She was not as attentive a mom as Belle. When it came to the cleanup part, her reaction was “You want me to do WHAT? THERE? I don’t think so!!” Thank goodness I had a lot of baby wipes on hand.
Just too cute…if only they would stay this small.
And then to finish up the year, a couple of the critters wanted their picture taken with me, although I can’t imagine what they will do with them!
Until next time, Happy Trails
