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 19th, 2009 — Posted in Fiber
In anticipation of the February Phat Fiber box arriving in everybody’s mailboxes over the next few days, and people getting their hands on my mini roving balls, I’ve been dyeing fiber and carding rolags so that I can commence on the full sized ones. Here are some pictures of the first ball I completed just now, it weighs an ounce:
This incredibly soft ball began as a raw first shearing from Sergeant Major (above, owned by Buena Vista Alpacas) which I dyed purple with grape Koolaid, then washed with woolite to get all the dirt and dye out. I brushed staples of this lovely soft lilac coloured fiber until all the debris was gone, then carded it thoroughly into soft batts with purple firestar and silver angelina. Rolled the batts into tight cigar-shaped rolags, then pulled them into a roving that I made longer by overlapping the rolags as I drafted the fiber. All the fiber is aligned for spinning worsted, it is just beautiful and ready to spin! I’ll be listing this in my Etsy store shortly, unfortunately I have only one of these until I order more purple firestar from Wind Rose Fiber Studio.
More roving balls will follow as my supplies come in. Right now I am awaiting black suri roving from my friend Belinda at Southern Oaks Alpacas for the Gypsy Girl and Vampire’s Kiss balls.
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Posted by roo on February 16th, 2009 — Posted in Marius, Julia, Penelope
Rachel advised me today that seeing Marius is so anaemic to ask the vet to rule out an ulcer, which can cause his exact symptoms. Managed to get relay that information to Linda just as she was about to load everyone into the trailer for their visit to the vet. It seemed like forever before I received a call, and then it was to ask if I wanted Marius’ tail x-rayed, because the vet could not tell for sure what was going on in there. Yes, of course I authorised that, I wanted to see if it was a birth defect or not. I glanced at my phone repeatedly after that, anxiously awaiting the results.
Linda finally called, she had waited at the vet the entire time for the x-ray and the blood work, and had some answers.
Julia is pregnant! Yay! She retained that pregnancy from Captain Black, is right on target with her pregnancy, and the vet even snapped a picture of the cria in utero. What a trooper, she’s simply priceless.
Penelope is open. No cria. Darn it.
Marius… oh, poor Marius. The crooked tail is a birth defect, he has in fact TWO bones in his tail, coming out of the joint. The sore on his foot has some kind of bacteria growing in it and will need to be washed with soap very carefully for a while. He has no ulcers, they put a camera down into his esophagus and checked him thoroughly that way. His red blood cell count is down, his white blood cell count is down… and to top it all off, his liver is not functioning properly, due to long term exposure to coccidia (parasite). He’ll be on medicines to get him on the road to recovery, the vet will check his liver function again in a few weeks to see if he is getting better. Sadly, Marius will be unsuitable as a herdsire and we will need to castrate him at a later date.
Please send him your warm thoughts and positive energies, if he pulls through this he will still be a very useful asset to our farm as a companion animal and fiber producer.
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Posted by roo on February 16th, 2009 — Posted in Ophelia, Mazara
With all our organising of the animals to be moved from SC to AL, and with the recent events, I have neglected to introduce our newest addition, MAR Ophelia. Rachel sent me a photograph of Ophelia a long time ago, and I instantly loved that pretty little face. When I was in Ohio in July last year I was finally able to meet her, and found that she is just as pretty in real life as she is in her pictures. We made the decision to purchase her in time to take advantage of the tax benefits for 2008, and to secure her before she was bred so that she was a little less expensive. Ophelia will be bred for the first time to Rachel’s newest herdsire CHASE TAVERN BODIE this coming Spring.
So, Ophelia, I’m sorry that it’s taken so long for your official introduction, but welcome to Moonwood Farm! And thank you Rachel, for sending these pictures just recently, a nice surprise in my inbox.
Ophelia, with Mazara in the background
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Posted by roo on February 15th, 2009 — Posted in Marius, Julia, Penelope
When we unloaded Marius at the new boarding farm, the comment was made that he ‘looked small’ for his age, and I must admit that for a cria that was so large when he was born, it had appeared to me for some time that his growth had screeched to a grinding halt once he got past the ‘lanky’ stage. But I have not been a close witness to babies growing up and the different stages they move through, and took it to be a normal part of development.
However, as we unloaded him from the van, he was light as a feather and when we felt his back, were startled to discover that he was nothing but a thin skeleton under all that fiber. His spine protruded so much that it scared me. I’d been worried about Dee here and there because there were stages she moved through where she looked very thin and drawn, but her body mass was always correct for her size. THIS, however, was very different, it disturbed me deeply.
Yesterday he was weighed. At seven months of age, he weighs a mere 43 pounds. He has an infected hind foot, too. Julia, his mother, is producing milk from all four of her teats. Sooooo… what’s the problem? And the icing on the cake… his tail is unusually crooked - it has either been broken at some point and healed in the wrong position, or it is something he was born with and will automatically cross him off the list as our potential herdsire.
Julia and Penelope are going to the vet tomorrow for ultrasounds, without question Marius is also going along, I have authorised a full physical on him. Needless to say, I am very worried, especially in light of what happened to Myra on Friday - we don’t want to lose another one! I am so thankful that the vet here specialises in camelids!
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