Fibery Creatures part two: The Girls

Back in November we acquired two male alpacas from a neighbor. My husband agreed to buy the rest of the herd from him, too. Now we also have four female alpacas, three of which are pregnant.

Aren't they cute? 

The boys don't seem to be particularly impressed with the fence that separates them from their girls; they spend quite a bit of time looking at them through the fence.

 They seem particularly impressed or concerned, or maybe jealous when the girls do something exciting. In this case they all went out to the edge of the pasture and then spooked when Amtrak went past blowing his horn.

The boys like to rest their chins on the gate.Scott and I find this quite amusing.

 This is Dee, she is pregnant, due at the end of the month. She is the first one to take food from your hand if you offer it. Her color is Medium Fawn and she has a white patch on her neck.

This next girl is Spice. She is not as quit to an offered snack as Dee, and wont get between her and food. She is quiet and sweet. Scott and I think her hair style makes her look like one of the WB cartoon sheep dogs. She is Medium Rose-Gray. She is also pregnant, and due at the end of the month.

This is Pearl, I like to call her Pearly Girl,She'll take treats from my hand if Dee doesn't bully her out of the way. She is only two years old this year, and not pregnant. She's White, no fancy term for the white, just white. She is Crescendo's daughter, she stayed with her at their old home for an extra week.

Crescendo is wearing the halter in this picture because we are waiting on her to drop her cria at any moment. Cria is the term for a baby alpaca. Crescendo is Light Fawn, and (obviously) pregnant. She is very cautious about treats from the hand. And yesterday when everyone wanted squirted with the hose she was not interested. She stayed at the neighbors for an extra week, because he thought she would drop at any moment, but nothing happened so he brought her over.

She has been here for a week and a half and still nothing has happened If she grazes 30 feet from the others we start to think something is going to happen, if she lays down we start to think something might happen. if she flips her tail we think something might happen. And yet, nothing has.

 I guess a watched alpaca does not drop a cria. It is making Scott very nervous, more nervous than when his own children were born.

the Boys, fibery creatures.

We bought a couple of Alpacas from a neighbor to our north. Two males,

Bad Karma
and Phenomenon.



The first thing they did was find darn near every burr in the pasture. Scott and I removed what they had picked up in their fleece, and then walked the pasture and pulled the burdock up that was still out there. I had high hopes that that would mean there would be less coming up this spring. HA!


The boys have big beautiful "doe eyes" under all that fluff.




And they have these cute nibbly noses, and it tickles when they eat out of your hands.


Compared to the horses the alpaca are very timid, unless you are the dog or the cat. Karma tree-ed my favorite cat, not long after we got the alpacas, and a couple weeks ago he gave the dog a lesson in who rules the pasture.He can run as faster or faster than Gypsy, and if he'd wanted to stomp all over her he could have. Good for her that he didn't.