Cindy is a Country Woman!

This week Country Woman Magazine published an article they did on our ranch.  I love the pictures and the writing is amazing--and all correct, which is rare in an article you don't write yourself.  Please take time to read what Ann Kaiser wrote, and take a look at Country Woman Magazine when you get a chance, too.  It's a great publication.  We are so honored to be part of it!

http://www.countrywomanmagazine.com

Humming in the Rain

People ask us all the time: “What do you do with the alpacas in the rain?”

“Not much”, I tell them.  “The alpacas have their own ideas about what to do in the rain.”

They hum, so sometimes I just hum along with them.  It’s the friendly thing to do.

Some of them stand under their shelters and eat.

Some of them go out to graze because staying under cover is boring.

Some of them sleep in the rain.  Those are usually the ones who grew up in Oregon.

Some of them stand in the damp under the shelter and pull their skirts up.  Those are always the Southern California girls.

At night they all huddle together under the shelter to stay warm.  I’ve yet to find an alpaca that was wet to the skin, even after 3 or 4 days of rain.  They have an amazing ability to stay warm and dry.  I guess that’s why I like wearing alpaca on days like this!

The dogs all have their coping mechanisms, too. 

 

Lucy is not pleased with the rain.The rabbits hide, and the gophers don’t come out.  There’s no one to herd. 
Today I told her that she needed to stay outside until the rain really got underway so she could play with Molly for awhile.  
She got soaked coming out of the barn several times in an hour to see if I had returned to the gate to rescue her.  Now she’s sleeping on an afghan in the office--just where she wanted to be in the first place.

Solomon and Molly like to curl up on beds in the barn...  

...but Athena—clever girl— likes to make her bed on high ground—the top of the hay cart.  No flood is going to get her!

The chickens are all tucked in their warm little coop.  

The ground squirrels have taken the day off.  

The snails, on the other hand, are having a field day.  I understand we have the French to thank for that...

So let the thunder roll, the lightning flash, and the rain come down.  It may not relieve the drought in all of California, but it’s filling up the local aquifers for our well, and I am grateful.  Think I’ll pour a cup of tea, pick up my warm, dry alpaca crochet project, and hum another tune.

Cindy Harris ~ www.alpacalink.com~ info@alpacalink.com

Champion!

CHAMPION!  It has such a nice ring to it!  I was grinning from ear to ear this weekend when AWH Torbio's Endless Summer won his championship in Arizona.  Not only is he beautiful and sweet, but he is one of our last Torbio boys.  He's built just like his famous daddy--square and blocky with heavy, shiny fleece.  A real joy!

There was a time, though, when I worried about him.  When he was about 6 months old we discovered one morning that he had broken his leg just above the hock of his right hind.  How he did it will forever be a mystery!  There was no indication of anything in the pasture.  Perhaps he had caught his foot in the fence while rolling and struggled to free it, or maybe he ran too fast and stepped in one of those nasty gopher holes.  In any case, he needed the vet, pronto!, so we called Dr. Jana and she rushed over with her casting kit.

We had to shave the copious amount of fleece on his hind leg to be able to cast it.  I cringed as Dr. Jana shaved it.  I had intended this boy for the show string, and now that deal was off, maybe indefinitely.

When an alpaca breaks a limb, it can cause them to walk with an uneven gait, sometimes forever, depending on how it heals, how good the casting was (which depends on how much he wiggles and how well the holders control him), and how quickly it heals.  This was a green stick break, thank goodness, so chances were good that it would be fine.  I was thinking of the cosmetic aspect of it, though.  We would have to see.

Six weeks in a 20 X 20 foot pen is enough to make anyone stir crazy, so when it was time for Endless Summer to return to the barn for the cutting off of his cast, he was glad to be allowed to walk on a halter anywhere at all.  

We put him on the shearing table to make it convenient for all concerned, and Dr. Jana revved up her cast-cutting saw.  What a racket!!  Cutting a cast always looks like it's going to cut off the limb in question to me.   But, being a good vet, she only cut the cast, which we then pried off of his leg, and examined the result.

The shearing table in action during shearing season.

The leg appeared to be completely healed--HURRAY!!  But the flakes of skin and the straggly fleece that had grown in the six weeks were pretty yucky looking, and I had to come to terms with the fact that this boy would not be showing as a juvenile, and maybe not as a yearling either.  Looking closely at the rest of his fleece made me almost want to cry when I thought about not showing him, but it was the only reasonable answer.

We turned Summer out for the rest of the year, shearing him on schedule.  His leg gradually got stronger and straighter.  We decided to hold him out his yearling year as well because the fleece regrowth on his leg made it look lopsided, even though his walk was now even and steady.

After his second shearing, though, his legs looked beautifully straight and strong, so we entered him in the Southwest Regional Alpaca Show for February 2014.  I hoped there was no remnant of unevenness in his gait.  It was really hard to tell sometimes because I was so used to seeing a hitch in his gitalong, but we decided to take a chance.  Endless Summer would show for the 1st time ever as a two-year old.

We took 3 alpacas for the Breeders Best Three class: Endless Summer, Wabash Cannonball, and Ste Mary.  They had 3 different herdsires and 3 different dams, but were amazingly similar despite the different pedigrees.  We took a 1st place, and the judge (Amanda Vandenbosch) had wonderful things to say about the group, so I had more confidence as I entered the 2 year old class with Endless Summer on Saturday afternoon.

Having been left primarily to his own devices other than being haltered at shearing time, Endless Summer was pretty "opinionated" about how he would walk on a halter.  I thought of Torbio, and how he resented having to wear a halter, as though it were somehow beneath him,  and I laughed.  Like Father Like Son.  To save my already sore arm (getting old is no fun!) I switched the lead rope around to give me more "torque", and Summer began to settle down, although never truly submissive.  He knows who his daddy was!

We won our class of 4, then re-entered the ring for the championship round.  On my left in the front row were 2 sons of our wonderful Apache, boys that we had bred and sold.  What a proud day it was to stand in the front row of the championship round with 3 gorgeous males that we had bred!

The judge examined each alpaca for a 2nd time and then asked for the champion banner. She hesitated just a moment, as usual trying to make everyone guess who she was going to award the championship to, but then walked confidently toward Endless Summer with her hand outstretched to shake mine.  What a thrill!  The championship often goes to the full-fleeced yearling in the class, but this time she chose a male who had never shown before, and had been shorn twice.  She asked me to lead him in front of the crowd while she talked about his heavy, fine, lustrous fleece, his heavy bone, and fluid gait -- apparently there was no visible trace of the broken leg!  It was a very exciting moment, made even better by the fact that the full fleeced yearling Apache son took the reserve championship!

Endless Summer will show a couple more times this season before retiring to his breeding career--the reward due a male who overcame a broken leg to become a champion!

Graduation Day for Miracle!

Some of you may remember Miracle's story…

…the cria we thought was dead who was really alive who had muconium spill and whose mother died the next day leaving her an orphan with legs all crooked and a kink in her neck who we thought wouldn't live but who has thrived in spite of our fears and dire predictions…

     Well, Miracle has graduated. She has become a full-fledged alpaca.  She's completely sold out to the idea. Unlike some crias who are bottle-fed, Miracle never really wanted to be a human, nor did she ever think we were alpacas.  She knew that she needed humans because they brought her bottle, but she never gave up hope that someday a real alpaca mommy would come along.  

     Now and then we put her together with a nursing dam we thought might adopt Miracle.  Being a survivor and an opportunist, our girl scampered across the pen and dove immediately for the milk bar.  She was not shy or apologetic about it at all!  Usually she would get a few sips for her efforts before she was discovered to be an interloper, but in the end the other moms were always determined to keep their nursing exclusive to their own cria.  She was disappointed, but continued to take her bottle eagerly the next time.  We found that a combination of whole cows milk mixed with plain yogurt was a good match for her digestive system, so fortunately we had no gastrointestinal challenges along the way.

     As a supplement at night, we began putting out Calf Manna pellets for her, and she nibbled at first, then began to look forward to them. It wasn't long before we saw her actually eating hay as well.    At first it was just "monkey see monkey do" to be like the alpacas we kept in the next pen, but there was a point at which we could tell she was actually chewing and eating the orchard grass.  She spent lots of time digging around in the feeder for the most tender morsels she could find.

     One night Miracle had a new game to play when we came with the bottle.  She had become the "Gingerbread Girl", pronking around the pen, taunting "Can't catch me! Can't catch me!"  It was a bittersweet moment, one that every parent (human and alpaca) faces-- the beginning of true independence, both behaviorally and nutritionally.   It wasn't long before she seemed confused about whether she should suck on or chew on the rubber nipple.  Our little girl was growing up! 

     At 4 1/2 months and 52 lbs, Miracle lost almost all interest in her bottle.  She loved Calf Manna, regular alpaca pellets, and hay.  She still got excited when she saw us coming, but wanted to run and play rather than nurse.  We began halter training her in preparation for the day we would take her out to a real pasture to be a "real" alpaca.

     On a Saturday in January when several of her human friends were here, we haltered Miracle and began the Pomp and Circumstance march to her new pasture.  It was Graduation Day for the little girl who had fought so hard to live.  We all laughed as she danced down the row on her little green halter, spooking at unseen surprises, running ahead of us, eager to see what was next.  

     Kate led her into Pasture 7--the young girls' pasture.  Miracle could hardly contain herself!  Although she had been taught to stand still until released after the halter came off, she leaped out of Kate's grasp as soon as she felt the buckle give way!  She couldn't wait another second to run in the wide open spaces!  It's fairly normal for the newest member of a pasture to be inspected by the herd, and although all the girls came to sniff who she was, Miracle was just as eager to greet and sniff them.  They chased her--she chased them.  It was a merry chase all around!

     With a tear in our eye we all left her with her new family.  She didn't even see us go.  That is what we wanted her to do, after all-- to assimilate seamlessly into the herd.  Secretly I think we all hoped that she might hesitate, look around, wave goodbye, smile, say she would miss us….  It's really impossible not to anthropomorphize these adorable creatures, no matter how hard you try, especially when you've spent a lot of time, effort, and prayer on them.

     Later that day we returned to her new pasture just to be sure all was well.  And it was.  Miracle came away from the crowd at the feeders that evening to say hello, but it was the way an alpaca says hello-- curious to see if we brought her anything, standing just out of reach.   We patted ourselves on the back, swallowing the lumps in our throats.  We had worked hard for this.  We were all successful--human and alpaca.

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One is Silver and the other's Gold

Make new friends, but keep the old;

One is silver and the other's gold.

-Girl Scout Camp Song

2013 marked the joyful beginning of a Dream Come True.  And like all good dreams, it took a fair amount of planning, sweating, figuring, conjuring, and just plain hard work.  But that's what you do when you have a dream worth following.

Lee's dream started during the presidential election of 2012.  I hadn't talked to Lee for years, but found him one day on--what else?--Facebook.  We had been friends in the Photo Club in high school, and now he was working as an elected county official in Illinois.  He lamented, "Well, I won my election, but I'm going to lose my job--my position is ending in a year.  NOW what am I going to do?"

In response, I tossed off a casual, "Don't worry--you can always raise alpacas."  

That was "one of those moments"--the kind where you know something life-changing has just happened.

Lee spent 2013 moving mountains.  He 

• attended workshops and shows, 
• visited his local alpaca breeders in his area, 
• flew to Windy Hill to shadow us for a week and pick out his herd, 
• sold his house, 
• bought a farm, 
• retro-fitted the new farm, 
• had lung surgery, 
• had shoulder surgery, 
• researched and purchased a tractor, a truck and a trailer....and did a lot of dreaming.

Exactly one year later, Lee arrived at Windy Hill with his new (to him) truck and trailer to take home his new herd of 15 beautiful suris to his new farm in Illinois--to start his New Adventure.

Lee's daughter and business partner, Katie, drove with him. Katie recently spent an Air Force tour in Saudi Arabia, so she was ecstatic to be part of the "homecoming" of her new herd of alpacas.  

She has decided to major in Farm Economics when she finishes her duties in Colorado Springs.  

One of the yearling females in named KKKKatie in her honor,
but her main alpaca squeeze is AWH Torbio's Accoyo King Xerxes

Lee says California alpacas are panty-waists!

Lee with Great Pyrenees LGD Lucy

Since 2000 I have made multitudes of New Friends.  But there's something special about reconnecting with an Old Friend in a New Way.  Lee was my high school mentor shooting football pictures for the yearbook.  Now, 46 years later, I am mentoring him in raising alpacas.  One is Silver and the other's Gold.

Visit Lee on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lee.newcom.7

 

Visit us at Windy Hill soon!  http://www.alpacalink.com

Maria's Miracle

Life is a story that leads to redemption, and miracles happen all around us on the most common of days.  Maria's little Miracle is such a story.

Without her mother, she could have been lost.  The bewilderment of finding herself alone in the world could have led to depression and despair.  But she wanted to live.

You could tell that she wanted to live.  After all, this was the baby we thought was already dead at her birth-- yellow from muconium staining, not breathing, limp.  Dr. Jana was so sure that she was dead that we all turned our attention back to Maria, her mother.  But 2 minutes later Lynette saw her breathing!  Even though she had shared in her mother's sedation, she made her presence--her life!--known.

Many crias who have a slow start refuse the bottle, but not this girl.  She was eager to take whatever milk was offered to her, in whatever form it was offered.  She wasn't picky at all!

But she had more hurdles to jump than just being an orphan.  Because she was a tail-first breach, her body had been crammed backwards into a tight space for quite awhile.  Her legs, hips, and neck were scrunched into positions not normally held by alpaca crias.  When she was finally freed from her cramped quarters, Miracle was a bit misshapen.

Her front legs gave the appearance of having been "windswept", with her left foreleg fairly straight, but the right curved abnormally to the right in a curve that encompassed her whole leg, from the shoulder to the ankle.  It almost hurt to imagine what it felt like to stand.

The hindquarters were similarly "swept" to the right. Her lower back and hips had been turned to the right, and her right hind leg opened out so that the stifle appeared to be on a sideways hinge.  Below the stifle, the leg was curved to the right similarly to the front leg.

Her neck was a normal length, but appeared shorter than usual because of a kink about an inch below the base of the ears.  It caused her chin to tuck in and her nose to point to the right a bit.  I wondered how she would be able to nurse, even if she did figure out how to stand.

Altogether, she was a discouraging sight, but nothing was too daunting for our girl!  

She learned to take the bottle quickly, and although she was only 12 lbs. at birth, she would virtually inhale 5-8 ounces in no time.  We ran into a local shortage of goat's milk, so we switched to organic whole cow's milk with some yogurt stirred in for the probiotic benefit, and she sailed right through the change.

On Day 2, I gave her a shot of Vitamin AD to help with the straightening and strengthening of her limbs and neck.  By Day 4 she was already looking straighter.  Now, two weeks later, even I have to look hard to see the slight curvature of her legs and hips.  Her neck straightened up quickly, also, which was a real blessing in the next part of the saga.

After Maria died, we tried Miracle with several other mothers to see if any of them would adopt her and let her nurse.















I knew she couldn't nurse well yet because of the kink in her neck, but I was encouraged with Clementine showed signs of accepting her.

Clementine is a maiden mother and had recently had her cria, so she was a good candidate for adopting an orphan.  Between Miracle's persistence and lots of good thoughts and prayers from friends, Clementine is now happily feeding both babies!! 


Hurray for Clementine---and for Kathy for being willing to let Clementine participate in our Adopt-A-Cria contest!

By the way, Clementine isn't the only one who has agreed to adopt little Miracle.  Kate and her grandson, Mason, have formally adopted Miracle, making this story even more miraculous.  Mason does almost all her care now, and is also practicing walking alpacas on a halter and lead rope for the Gold Country Gathering.  He hopes to take Miracle to shows when she is old enough.  He is getting to be a real Alpaca Wrangler!

So our little girl has found a family and security without her mommy.  I'm sure we're still not as good as another alpaca at making her feel secure and loved, but she definitely is--secure AND loved.

Miracles still happen in the modern age.  Don't let anyone tell you different!

The End in the Beginning

September 26, 4:30 AM

I found them this morning, keeping each other warm in the predawn.  Maria lay on her side, the coil set from the IV fluids stretched across the pen, still securely attached to her neck wrap.  The cria lay across her body at the base of her neck, sound asleep, like a tableau from a Greek tragedy.  The slight rise and fall of her tiny chest told me she was sleeping deeply.  The absolute stillness of her mother told me that Maria slept a different kind of sleep.

It would be unfair to leave the story unfinished.  Tuesday's triumphant and miraculous birth was a story that was almost too good to be true.  And as those stories sometimes do, it gave way to tragedy this morning.

Do you remember the movie, "Old Yeller", where the fierce and heroic dog saves his adopted family  from a rabid wolf at the bonfire?  Travis' mother insists that they keep Old Yeller in the corn crib for two weeks just in case the wolf had bitten him and given him the dreaded "hydrophoby".  Fourteen days later the tension in the music builds as an impatient younger brother, Arlis, creeps out to let the dog loose so he can play with his best friend.  Mama and Travis arrive just in time to keep the snarling monster bay.  All is lost.  Old Yeller is doomed…  Actually, he had been all along--we just couldn't see it before.

The seeds of Maria's tragedy began even as Tuesday's triumphant birth played itself out.  Despite antibiotics, banamine, a clean uterine flush Wednesday morning, normal vital signs and normal behavior, we were losing Maria all along.  I knew it when I came out to check on them after dinner.  She had been up almost all day, waiting patiently while her baby learned to nurse.   But as dusk descended, she lay in the corner of her pen with her head stretched out in front of her, too tired to stand.  

The sobbing started somewhere deep in my gut.  I heard it before I realized it was me…such an unearthly sound, the kind of crying that links us all in a chain where we feel each other's suffering.  After yesterday's elation, I was once again breathless, but this time with the knowledge of the death that was yet to come.  Nonetheless I called Dr. Jana.  I couldn't just let Maria fade away without some tangible proof that there was no other path to be followed.

For the second time in as many days Dr. Jana pulled her car into the yard.  She took a blood sample  and did a thorough exam.  Everything seemed normal except her potassium.  Hoping to correct it with fluids, we set her up with an IV drip in a small pen where her baby could be with her.

People often ask, "What's the down side of this business?"  I have to say, this is it.  We raise them from itty bitty crias to adults who go on to have crias of their own;  watch them, love them, monitor their nutrition, their pregnancies, help birth their babies… and then something like this comes along.  I usually have pretty good boundaries with my alpacas.  I can even sell most of them.  But when I have to do intensive nursing care because one of them is really sick, all those boundaries crumble.  I can't help it.  I wanted her to get well, to nurse her baby, to go on to have another one someday.

But instead, I watched her slip further and further away through the night, until at 4 AM she lay still.  It was almost anti-climactic.  I had known death was coming all night.  But I don't think anything ever prepares us for the actual moment that life ends, the realization that the soul of one who was with us is just… gone.  I felt an emptiness because I had hoped it could be different.

As I stood there letting reality settle in, the cria let out a loud sigh, as if to remind me that all was not lost--her little life had just begun.  It was comforting to be reminded of the "circle of life".  Maria would live on in her cria, and I would now have a much bigger role in this cria's life, so I better get busy and warm up a bottle!  Tomorrow, as Scarlett O'Hara would say, is another day.