Posted by roo on June 26th, 2008 — Posted in Uncategorized
One of the things I am immensely looking forward to when we move onto the farm is a huge garden of organic vegetables and a pumpkin patch! Over the years, both here and in Australia, I have grown vegetables, but the gardens were always very small and I could only grow enough to supplement, not enough to actually live off. More and more, with each passing year, I am increasingly saddened that everything in our lives is permeated with toxins, poisons and plastic. Today I received an email from a friend, which shows a slideshow about plastic bags. I’m excited that FINALLY it looks like a turning point has been reached:
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This is very interesting … I know that most of us use our cloth bags as much as possible, but this certainly made me realize how important it is to never forget them in the car, or at least run out to the car to get them before they start bagging my groceries.
Some of it isn’t new news, but I had no idea of just how much plastic bag use and oil comsumption were so linked.
http://www.poconorecord.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080506/MULTIMEDIA02/80505016
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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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Posted by roo on June 20th, 2008 — Posted in Bunnies, Fiber, Penelope
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20 June 2008 - hand processing wool
How do we process our raw alpaca fleeces by hand? We’ve put together a photograph illustrated explanation!
click here |
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18 June 2008 - Penelope’s for sale
We need to make room at John’s farm to bring in a female with a new bloodline, and that means one of ours has to go… reluctantly, we chose our beloved Penelope. You can see her Alpaca Nation listing by <<clicking here>>. We’re asking $10,000, although we’re willing to let her go for $8,000 if she’s paid for before 1 August! |
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18 June 2008 - baby bunnies
We are thrilled and excited to announce that Sienna is on top of her leg injury and we have bred her to our black pedigree male Nomi for a litter due around 10 July 2008. We will retain any colours that we do not already have. The rest will be offered for sale (without a pedigree) for $30 each. Email us after Sienna’s due date to enquire about available colours. |
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Posted by roo on June 18th, 2008 — Posted in Myra
The phone ringing woke me up, and I knew without looking at the caller ID that it was John. No-one else would be calling me so early. “Baby finally here?” I asked, having expected Dee Dee to deliver before even the roosters were awake. “No,” came the reply, “On it’s way.” So I hadn’t missed it! I pulled on a pair of overalls over my underwear, ran into the bathroom, realised as I was rinsing toothpaste from my mouth that I had used my husband’s toothbrush by mistake, dressed Jesse hurriedly, and ran out the door after making sure my camera was in my bag. I drove 70 through the 45 zones, and arrived too late. Of course. Once crias decide to come, they come quickly.
As I approached the obviously exhausted Dee Dee who was cushing while she awaited the expelling of her placenta, I was shocked to see a light coloured cria hiding behind her. For some reason I had been expecting a black boy. “Is that a light rose grey?” I asked John as I peered at what was visible of the cria. “No, I think it’s a fawn,” he replied. I was thrilled! I’m such a sucker for fawns and we do not own one.
Jason arrived soon after I did, and I plucked up the courage to peek under the tail at the gender. I could not see anything, so I leaned in closer. I looked as high up under the tail as I could without touching it, but saw nothing, and with a pang of disappointment I said, “It’s a boy, isn’t it?”. I know that initially it had not mattered to us whether Dee delivered a male or a female, because the cria was a bonus anyway. We had initially hoped to purchase her open. But after taking a hard look at the direction we want to move in when it comes to selective breeding, I was hoping that she would deliver a girl.
“You might want to look again,” John said. So it was a girl! I reached out, lifted the tail, and there it was! Her genitalia were located so high up that I couldn’t have possibly seen it without lifting the tail all the way up. Oh wow! Not only did she deliver a very unexpected fawn, but a female at that! Sitting back on my haunches I felt very light and happy, revelling in the moment of realisation that so far both our crias had been female, and both of such beautiful colours. It served as a reminder that we were so very lucky, and as a gently nudge of encouragement.
That tense moment of uncertainly out of the way, the wait being finally over, and Dee having delivered the cria unassisted successfully after her bout of m-worm, I could finally relax. I took out my camera and proceeded to take pictures. Yuk. I loved my coolpix camera before getting the Nikon D70, but having to go back to it while my D70 sits on my desk with a broken card reader was just awful. Looking at the pictures on my computer later I was surprised that they turned out okay - it was so hard to see what was displaying on the viewfinder in the rays of the morning sun.
Once the placenta was expelled we moved mother and baby to the small pasture where John’s female Delilah was housed with her recently born cria. A quick stop at the scale on the way showed her weight to be somewhere between 13 and 14 pounds, it was hard to tell due to the scales having gotten wet during a rain shower and not working properly. A squirt of A&D vitamins, a half a tube of colostorum, and a warm water enema later, and the cria was happily pooping, peeing, and curiously checking out everything and everyone, including my skin which she wanted to suckle while looking for milk.
Jesse was just smitten, wanting to cuddle with her, and even going to get a handful of hay for her, which of course she is far too young to eat. But Jesse’s only 3 years old, and his caring gesture was very beautiful. We had to tear him away from her in the end so that she could nurse. John instructed me in how to remove the wax plug from the nipples and to check for milk flow. All cylinders were working in that department! We left the animals to bond and returned late that afternoon to take some pictures of the fully dried cria before I returned home to Huntsville.
I was startled at how tightly her fleece was curled! She has a lot of it, being in the womb so long, and it’s so silky, irredescent and clean. John will be shearing the new crias soon seeing it’s been so hot (in the 100’s) in Aiken already. Dee will be bred to Billie in two weeks… and the whole cycle will be starting all over again!
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Posted by roo on June 18th, 2008 — Posted in Myra, Dee Dee
We have decided on a name for the cria:
Gustav’s Myra of MoonwoodShe will be called ‘Myra’. It was a relatively easy decision compared to coming up with a name for Demi! We narrowed our choices down to (1) MAIRA: Hebrew for ‘The Moon’, and (2) GISLI: Islandic for ‘Ray of Sunshine’. We chose Maira but decided to change the spelling so that her name won’t be mispronounced. Myra was born during the full moon phase. I really love ‘Gisli’ too, but it seems that most of our animal names tend to end with an ‘ee’ sound.
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