The first arrival...

If there's one thing that it's compulsory to post a blog entry about, it must be the first arrival of the season:


Yes, that's right - it's a Suri. We don't really think of ourselves as Suri breeders, it's a bit of a side-line, but we do have a small group and are trying to get a good brown line going.

This one is particularly significant though - it's the first cria to be born here from one of our own certified boys (shameless advertising link to the sire...).
Mum and baby doing well - already trying to pronk (but landing in an undignified tangle of legs on each attempt).

Meet Ghandi

After Kitties yesterday - a puppy story today.

Meet the latest member of the Prados family.

Not really an alpaca story, but puppy pictures are always worth posting. We’ve called him Ghandi, not just because he was small, brown and wrinkled when we chose him but because he stood out from the rest of the litter by having a quiet dignity about him. While all the others were racing around like mad things, He was just sitting there, taking it all in and clearly top-dog.

There’s been a big, dog-shaped hole in our lives since arriving in Australia in 2004, but we didn’t want to get one until we were sure that we could offer a home where someone was around most of the time and we were properly settled.

I’d forgotten just how much work a puppy could be…

A very fancy kitty

A large international parcel arrived at our little town post office today, always an event of interest – ‘What have those odd poms with the long-necked sheep brought from America this time?’

But we’re not telling... we like a bit of mystery.

But we’ll tell you: we’re now the proud owners of a ‘Fancy Kitty’.

No... we’re not importing US felines, we’ve invested in a ‘Kitten’ drum carder from Ron Anderson in Montana (http://www.fancy-kitty.com/carders1.html). We decided to go for one with an electric motor and brush attachment and it arrived fully assembled and packed with so much care that it probably travelled in more comfort than any human passenger (now there’s a thought for the next long-haul flight...).

It is a thing of beauty – hand made from quality materials, Ron clearly takes great pride in his work, it even included all the parts needed for converting it back to a manual machine (I don’t think that’s very likely though).


It didn’t take long to make sure everything was there (it was), check that the power supply really was multi-voltage (it was), replace the US plug and glance at the excellent instructions for just long enough to feel over-confident.

Sarah had pre-washed some fleece from Zahava – a beautiful mahogany coloured girl and the mother of Puck – this year’s little superstar (the term beautiful here refers to the fleece, not the animal, who has a face and a temper that only a really dedicated mother could love).

I have to break off for moment here, dear reader, and admit that this bit doesn’t sit easily – I like to spin from raw fleece, straight off the animal’s back, nothing more than a quick shake to get the worst of the rubbish out, but washing it first is what all the experts advise, so that’s what we did.

So, less than 30 minutes after breaking the tape on the top of the box, we had our first batt. Not too bad for a first attempt.

A quick dot-point review of the machine:

• Solid and well made
• Easy to use (almost dummy-proof in fact)
• Good instructions
• Helpful and patient supplier – Ron answered all of my dumb emailed questions himself, often within minutes of me sending them
• Excellent motor – very quiet but with plenty of power
• Very well priced (it cost less than I would have payed here for a lesser model – even with the shipping cost).

So the final question – why buy a carder when I prefer ‘raw’ spinning? There are a couple of reasons. Firstly, I can’t keep up with demand and I have to face it, spinning from batts is much quicker. The other reason is that, with fifty animals, we’re in an awkward place... Not enough to make commercial bales, too much to use ourselves or sell as plain fleece. There is a greater demand for part-prepared fibre and the margins make selling it more attractive – I’m selling raw fleece to spinners at $30 per kilo, but batts go for $12 - $15 per 100g; that's a big difference so it seems to make sense.

Getting back to blogging

At last, our lives seem to be getting back on track and slowing down. The National Show is well and truly over so I have more time which means Perry has more time as well. It has to be said that Perry and James were a big help whilst I was working on the show with a group of dedicated alpaca breeders.

Our shearing is now finished. As we did it all ourselves this year, our record number of animals in one day stands at 13 but the weather played a part in that, there is only so much time you can spend outside in 32 degree plus days (we stopped when the temp got to 32).

The show season for 2009 is now over and we don't start again until March. As we look back over our show year we feel quite content with what we have achieved; 52 ribbons from 9 shows with a show team of 5 animals (except on the last show where we took 9 animals). These 9 animals made up our team over the show season . Plus we have 2 girls on maternity leave so they didn't attend the last show. Now we just have to start planning for next year as we have set ourselves a standard to live up to.

So we now start cria watch. Our first should have arrived on the 13th but spring cria always seem to be that bit later. Our website has a camera that gives a regularly up dated view of the maternity paddock so keep an eye out and you may catch a new arrival.

We're still here

I have to apologise for the lack of posting but things have been busy here. We have had 2 shows since we last wrote Colourbration in Victoria and the Royal Adelaide Show. Gypsy, Puck and Goldie did their usual, Best Brown and 1st places. We took Colin our Brown Suri stud male to Colourbration it was his first outing for nearly a year, he managed a second place. We took an all Prados team to the RAS a first for us, we had an unplaced white, we weren't surprised by that but we were surprised when Beatrice got a 2nd place as looking at the competition we thought we would be unplaced.

We are continuing to work with our vet to discover why Choco died, the results on his heart and lung were not that helpful so we are now awaiting blood results from 10 of the animals. The results suggested toxic plants but the plants mentioned do not grow in this area or Selenium and Vitamin E deficiency. We regularly give AD&E so vitamin E is unlikely and Selenium is in the pellet they have. As you can imagine we are keeping a close eye on all the herd.

We are luck to have a botanist/zoologist living next door to us, she has walked the paddocks with me and there is nothing out of the ordinary there. And on Sunday I have an alpaca breeder who knows all there is to know about what alpacas can, can't and shouldn't eat coming to walk the paddocks. Our biggest concern is the same thing happening to another animal and still not knowing how to prevent it.

We will keep you updated.

Perry and I are looking forward to a break in New Zealand later in the month. We are going to the NZ National, we are interested to see the animals. Plus we will have a tour around the local area.

Sarah

Show fatigue...

I think we may have overdone it... Nine shows this year and we're not half way though, four down and five to go.

This week saw the team at Murray Bridge for the South Australian Colour Classic, a two day 'colourbration' event where supremes are awarded across colour lines.

Murray Bridge isn't that far from us and most of our mob, apart from one white girl, weren't due on until day two, so I stayed home on Saturday to look after things here in the morning intending to join the team later for the dinner and to prepare for the big day on Sunday.

It all went horribly wrong. They whipped through the whites like they were going for a speed record (James' Fifi got a first in class - our first win for a white) and started on the browns next. Sarah phoned, but I got there just too late and missed all the fun and fun there was.

There are 8 classes in each colour - junior, intermediate, adult and senior, split by male and female. We had three of our top browns entered, Gypsy, Lulu (both from Golden Flame) and Puck (a Warrior boy). They each win their class, so we have three in the supreme line up and just James and Sarah to handle. A call for help and Rosalie from Andean Gold takes Puck - the reasoning goes like this: Gypsy is frontrunner as far as we're concerned, she already has three best brown ribbons this year so James took her, Lulu is pregnant, it's her last show as she increasingly turns into psycho-paca and likes nothing more than to kick judges and this is only Puckster's second blue - he's the obvious choice to give to someone else. You can guess what happens - the stars all line up, the wind is in the right direction, the Puckster's fleece peaks at the best I've seen it and he takes the big one! Poor Rosalie is embarrassed to be taking the trophy for an animal she doesn't even know the name of and the judge is puzzled about why the stewards and half the breeders around the ring are suddenly laughing their heads off at his decision.

Probably the best show we've had with a first for Goldie in the fawns as well. Icing on the cake was another surprise - Supreme coloured suri for Colin in the Fleece competition.

After the bad news earlier in the week this was a real boost to us all.

A sad day...

Today is that day that we knew had to come sometime...

After nearly three years, we lost our first Alpaca.

Choco was only just two years old, an occasional member of the show team (second place ribbons in three shows) and only recently certified and DNA tested for stud work.

Monday he was fine, right as rain, playing in the boys' paddock with the others. Tuesday morning, he was on his own, couldn't get up and really lethargic. We called the vet out, he clearly had a heart problem and we moved him up to the house. Tuesday night, before I went to bed I sat with him for a while, he was very quiet but had his head up and seemed to be showing signs of recovery but sadly, he was gone by morning.

It had to happen sometime, but this was really unexpected, we've nursed a few animals back now that were touch and go for a while, but this was so sudden with no clue that there was a problem.

Unfortunately it's the reality of any type of livestock raising, but it's still pretty miserable....