Spring Has Sprung

 

New Friendships  "Hey Man, Wanna be pals?"

Spring has created many new adventures and opportunities for us.  We had our alpacas sheared for the very first time (ours not theirs).  We were told by a knowledgable alpaca breeder/exhibitor that our male cria Oliver is of extremely nice show/breeding quality.  We had no clue.  We simply thought he was cute.  I rood my first yearling wether (Chandler).  It was a pretty simple and fun experience.  I'm sure I didn't do it up to standards, but the wool ended up in the bag.  That was my goal. 

We are done lambing as of April 7th.  With only 3 bred ewes, lambing goes by quickly.  We ended up with 4 ewe lambs and 2 ram lambs.  One of the twin boys is comfortably resting in a dog jacket in our living room.  He has gotten off to a rough start, and we are feeding him with an eye dropper hoping to move onto the bottle soon.  He just can't seem to suck hard enough just yet.  He has improved throughout the day.  All other lambs are healthy and energetic.  

We are still kidding.  We have 2-3 nannies left to kid.  We are a little unsure about Charlotte.  She's a heavy gal.  At this point, we have 2 sets of twin girls, 1 single  boy and a set of all boy triplets.  They are super fun to watch in the lot.  Their moms are worn out, but watching them popcorn around is a pretty good stress reliever.  Pygmy kids have to be one of the cutest babies out there. 

At this time, we also have baby chicks.  We have duck, guinea and chicken eggs in 2 full incubators.  We also stumbled across a duck nest in one corner of our barn.  Spring has brought a lot of new life to our house.  We have one litter of puppies, with hopefully another on the way in May.  We are starting to introduce our LGD puppies to the livestock.  They are so spoiled that they just want back with the kids.  It will be a challenging adjustment for them.  We would have started them sooner, but...Sheldon needed some serious TLC. 

After lambing this season, I am really looking forward to adding a couple more ewes into next season's line-up.  We have 2 yearlings at this time.  I do believe that we will be keeping one ewe lamb from this season's babies.  Now, time to shop around!

If we can figure out what to do with multiple bags of alpaca fiber and sheep wool, life will be good.