Alpaca Blogging at Windy Hill: A Second Round of Green Beans...and a few more crias

These bush beans that I grew this year are amazing! 6 little plants gave me 4 meals of green beans on the first round, then they completely reset and are producing like crazy again! What a year for gardening-- with alpaca poop, of course. 😊

My hat is off to friend and colleague, Penny Wynn! This beautiful little black suri girl was born early at Penny's place 4 days ago. When she went out to do one last check on the yard at 7 pm, there was this 12 lb baby with a subnormal temperature and no strength at all. Penny gave her a bottle and kept her warm through the night (ssssshhhhhh...don't tell anyone she took her in the bedroom with her!), and continued working with her for the last 4 days. We came up with a plan for feeding and treatments, which she followed as well as coming up with ideas of her own that worked very well.

This morning I got an excited text from Penny:

"Her weight is 13 lbs!"

And that was even after spending the night outside with her mom and nothing but nursing!

Congratulations on a great success, Penny!!

Thank you for all you have done!

This weekend I was blessed with a visit from my son and his family, as well as my daughter. I love it when they come to see Grammy and the ranch. Here is Zurich showing off her baby boy, Roofus (Raise the Roof!). Little Roofus was happy to receive some love from all the girls. We made sure to see all the alpacas and the dogs.

Farmer Don found a playhouse for his grandkids online. It was a 2-story playhouse with linoleum and carpet, and a loft where anybody (anybody who fits, that is) would want to have a sleepover. It needed a good paint job, and then he talked me into painting some bright characters on it before he took it to them. It was a fun project, and great to see the kids in it --the perfect finishing touch.

I had to buy this shirt for my grandgirls. Target, of course. Here are some llamas (you can tell by their curved ears) posing in a Zoom meeting. Maybe they are at school...?

After we played with Zurich and Roofus, we took a break and played with dogs for awhile. Harper loves Zeke. She says he is a Juice Box--- because you just want to squeeze him! He never minds the attention, but sometimes he needs a nap afterward.

Molly loves to hang out by the OB Pasture and watch for new crias. We still have 4 crias due, but these last 4 seem determined to hold onto their babies for awhile still. 2 white suris, and 2 gray huacayas still to go. I'm pretty sure we'll get white suris from the white suri moms--or at least fawn. But this year has only produced 3 gray crias for Tracy, despite several attempts. We've had fawn, black, and brown, though. Plenty of it. Breeding for gray can be tricky!

Adam got some alpaca socks for his birthday on Sunday. He loves alpaca socks-- I always know what to get him. While he was out of the room, Violet decided to try them on. She wore them around like knee socks for quite awhile until they got too warm.

Look at that concentration trying to put them on! lol

Meanwhile, Harper was feeding leaves to Truffle. Truffle is a great friend of everyone because she loves all the treats we bring her. She teaches the others that it's fun to take treats from our hands too.

Truffle's friend Jade, however, thinks that 2-leggers in the pasture are in the way and a disturbance to her nap schedule. While Truffle was busy getting treats, Jade sneaked up on Harper and gave her a big spit, right in her pretty hair! We all clapped and cheered because it was her first time being spit upon, but as you can see, she was not very happy about it. 😖

Nonetheless, she still earned her title as the new

President of the Windy Hill Spitupon Club.

At long last my old yucky carpet is going away and being replaced by brand new vinyl plank. I just love it! It's clean and makes all the rooms seem bigger.

It's always a great time to purge more "stuff", too.

Does anyone need a nice china cabinet?

Give me a call! 805-907-5162

This little guy wants to remind you that we have several really fine alpacas for sale. Many of the moms have crias at their sides, as well as being rebred for next summer. Take a look at the Sales page on our website. If you don't see what you are looking for there,

I am still trying to get them all listed!

https://www.alpacalink.com/animals/alpacas