Posted by roo on February 20th, 2009 — Posted in Myra
Today the paperwork arrived from the adjustor’s office, a 2-page form to complete and return to them. Of course I’ve never had an alpaca die before, so the form is completely new to me. Not just that, the information they are asking for is completely irrelevant.
Bill of sale? Receipts for purchase? Breeding contracts? Gosh… uhm, no, Myra was born into our herd, we didn’t buy her, or purchase a breeding for Dee to conceive her.
How long had she been ill? When did the vet attend to her? Geez… none of the above, she was supposedly fine one evening and dead the next morning.
In fact, I can’t find a single question on that form that I can actually answer. I think I’ll have to all the adjustor tomorrow and talk with them about it.
The weirdest thing of all was going through her ARI registration process a few days ago. I stared at the DNA blood card that I pulled out of her file, thinking back to when we put that drop of blood on there. She was 11 days old and having her cria fleece shorn off. I’d filed it when I returned home, ready to send to ARI when it came time to register her, but with all that’s been happening I never got around to it. I called ARI to explain what had happened and that I wanted to register her anyway so that she was in the database and could be included in statistics, research and lineage records. The very nice lady told me to go ahead and register her as usual and once I knew the cause of death I could amend her record and mark her as deceased.
I’m still having trouble believing she is actually gone.
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Posted by roo on February 14th, 2009 — Posted in Myra
Myra, our little light fawn miracle cria from Dee, without warning or any other sign there was something wrong, was found dead in the pasture by the farm hand yesterday morning, the day we were scheduled to move all the alpacas from the boarding farm in SC to AL. It came as a horrible shock. She was thriving, very healthy, in fact the vet looked at her not even two weeks ago, when she came to do fecals and draw blood for the travel certificates.
I had added both her and Marius to our camelid insurance policy the day before yesterday to protect them for the journey to AL and while at the new boarding farm, never expecting of course for something like this to happen. Because we had only just added her to our policy, the insurance company required that her necropsy be done by a diagnostic lab, not the local vet. John kindly offered to drive the 3 hour round trip to take her there, so that we could commence loading the rest of our herd into the vans to take them to AL as planned.
I requested that Myra be sheared before they disposed of her, she was of course in full, beautiful fleece with shearing just around the corner, but my request by denied by Clemson University.
We are in shock, everyone was drawn to her and her big doe eyes, we could have sold her on several occasions even at this young age, but wanted to keep her for our foundation herd. Such a shame, a terrible loss.
I’ll post the cause of death once the necropsy results are in.
Myra two weeks ago
Myra two weeks ago
Myra two weeks ago
First steps
Me carrying her to the scale
Jesse welcomes the new addition
About an hour after birth
Shearing, 11 days old, comforted by Jesse (at first I told him to stop
because I thought she was being agitated, but she became
distressed when he walked away, so I asked him to come back
and he stroked and talked to her the whole time, keeping her calm)
John’s beginner’s shearing technique wasn’t perfect, but it was
perfect enough to get her nice and cool. Jason’s showing her off.
Instead of running to Dee, she came running to me!
Poor thing got confused 
Two and a half months
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Posted by roo on August 31st, 2008 — Posted in Marius, Myra, Dee Dee
Jason was at John’s on Thursday evening to pay the boarding for September, and snapped off some pictures of our alpacas.
I was very surprised at how much Marius has changed. He’s very tall, but he’s keeping his solidness. His conformation is now also beginning to develop and I very much like how ’square’ he is in his body, and how well he carries his legs underneath him. The wool on his face is coming in now too, and there is a distinct line high up on his nose where the short coverage ends and the long wool sets in. From the moment I saw his size and his cria fiber something told me that this boy is going to be worth watching. With his bloodlines, I sure do hope he’ll develop into something special for us… so far he has not let me down.
Studying the photos of Myra, I came to the realisation of how much she is beginning to look like her full sister MAR Gustav’s Mimsy, only a different colour. I had hoped that Myra would not have the scantily clad lower legs that the chileans are so renowned for, but it appears that she’s inherited these from Dee. It will be interesting to see Dee’s 2009 cria from Billie, see if that cria too will have scantily clad legs *grin*. Myra’s colour is lightening up I think… it’s hard to tell. But she sure is incredibly pretty, petite, and according to Jason, very dainty.
Speaking of Dee, I was somewhat startled to see the photographs that Jason had taken of her. She’s lost quite a bit of body mass and that concerns me. Again, it could be the angle of the photographs, but I need to make a mental note to speak to John and see if he’s weighed her lately by any chance.
Oh, I am so aching to have all the alpacas home!
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Posted by roo on July 2nd, 2008 — Posted in Myra, Billie, Dee Dee
Little Myra was just 11 days old last Saturday, but with the blazing South Carolina sun, it was necessary to shear her to keep her cool. In fact, she was the last out of a handful of crias on John’s farm that was shorn.
Jason carried her to the table and we strapped her down… what a strange feeling it was to restrain such a small helpless animal, but it was for her own safety. John was shearing Myra himself - this round of crias was the first time he had ever wielded the clippers and he was nervous. But he did a great job! Jesse was at Myra’s head, stroking her and talking to her, and although at first I thought this may make her more anxious, it actually calmed her down and I had to ask him to continue doing this as John John sheared. I worked like mad to collect the golden fleece that fell from the blades - it was so fine that the wind carried it to the edge of the table (and in a lot of cases, over it) before I could catch it and stuff it in a cloth bag. Each time I opened the bag some pieces of wool would escape. I had no idea how unruly it was *grin*
Myra handled the shearing well and without much of a struggle, but when we put her down to rejoin Dee I expected her to wildly make a run for it. Instead, she stood still for a moment, then made a beeline for ME, humming a ‘I’m lost, are you my mommy?’ question. I had to lead her back to the herd, where she found Dee and proceeded to nurse happily.
I couldn’t wait to spin Myra’s wool! Of course it was a complete disaster. It was so short that I had trouble carding it, but I managed to make rolags out of it. However, when I pulled on the first rolag to make it into a roving, it fell apart in my hands. Not easily dissuaded, I spun it anyway, but although I managed to make yarn out it, it did not do the cria fiber any justice at all. It was prickly and and had fibers sticking out of it everywhere. Jasper is shedding his angora coat right now, so I decided to blend Myra’s wool with the longer angora (Jasper’s coat is about 2 inches long right now) which was very successful! It allowed me to pull the rolag into a roving and it was relatively easy to spin. I just need to ply it now and wash it, and see what the end result is.
Yesterday it was time re-breed Dee again. I wanted to give Billie another opportunity to breed this year, so John freed a small pasture for the two of them (and Myra). It was almost funny, the way the two of them ignored each other when we put them in together, each grazing on an opposite end of the pasture, not even throwing each other a glance.
Myra, on the other hand, was most curious about this big black male, and repeatedly approached him with an outstretched nose, only to jump away from him with her little tail in the air when he returned the gesture. After this had been going on for close to half an hour, a strange happened. Myra actually LED Billie calmly to her mother, and things began to roll immediately. He had Dee down almost immediately, and I called to John that things were underway. ‘Get her tail out of the way,’ he called back from the pasture he was in, and then it sank in fully that I was in charge of this breeding myself. Wow. My own two animals, my first own breeding.
I crouched down next to them and leaned down to peer underneath Billie to find Dee’s tail. Before we put her in the pasture I had put a knee high stocking on it, of course it was black, and almost impossible to see. When I did locate it, it was wet, and very carefully pinching an edge of it between my thumb and index finger, managed to pull it out of the way. It was then that Billie was able to get in position properly and breed successfully. He was at it for an hour, each time Dee got up he brought her down again, and I was very impressed with his level of competence compared to his first breeding with Jazzabella. Although I had doubts that his first breeding with Jazzabella was successful, it actually WAS. And we only ever saw him breed with her for maybe 5 or 10 minutes.
Assuming the breeding with Dee took yesterday, we can expect a cria from them around the 17th of June. How exciting!
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Posted by roo on June 24th, 2008 — Posted in Myra
Today we paid our final instalment on Billie, yay! Transfer of ownership is in motion - it’s such a satisfying feeling.
A week has passed already since Myra was born, and when Jason went to visit this afternoon I asked him to snap some pictures with his phone so that I could see how she’s developing. A cria can change so much in just a week. He sent the photos from his phone to my email, and what a surprise to see the format he sent them in… a banner format, all joined together? Wow… some phone he has! *grin* (see above and below)
One week from now we’ll breed Dee Dee to Billie. I’ll head to Aiken on Friday to spend the weekend and be there for the breeding to see how Billie handles it this time.
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