Be careful what you wish for ...
What a day. What a day.
I started by writing about the seven false starts on my blog that I've made in the past two days and how I should have saved one of the two posts I made in the same day back on the 8th. I went on to write about four paragraphs on the fence -- mostly complaining-type verbiage. I mentioned I was making good progress on Pinero's fiber and that I was probably going to start plying the next bunch today.
Then, I made the mistake of writing the following phrase ... "Of course, I could actually go and do something interesting so I have something to write about, too. This spending half the day in front of the computer trying to compose something erudite isn't necessarily that conducive to writing anything other than a blog about writer's block."
At the time, I thought nothing of it and I happily started plying until I got a double-strand break (that phrase had a different meaning in grad school) at which point I pulled a skein onto my niddy-noddy and happily started plying again.
One must be very careful what one wishes for when one mentions "interesting" days without specifying a definition of "interesting" -- particularly when one owns livestock -- particularly when said livestock are very expensive and border on being pets.
We think Chloe had a miscarriage today.
Chloe is the gray alpaca in the picture on our homepage and the model for our logo. There are more pictures of her on her Alpacanation page.
It all started sometime before lunch when Pam said Chloe was acting funny. I looked at Chloe and I didn't see anything -- if you ask me, Chloe's always acting funny.
That's one of our differences. Pam see things in our alpacas that catch her eye as being out of the ordinary, while I just see alpacas acting funny like they always do. Pam can watch the dog walk a dozen steps and know if she has to pee or poo or both -- with something better than 90% accuracy. She's the same way about the alpacas. With her coaching, I can begin to see some of what she points out to me, but I'm not in her league. And, that's part of the reason Pam does much of the animal care and I do the spinning.
One of the hard things about raising alpacas is that they are very stoic animals. Because they're prey animals, they work very hard to cover up any sign of illness, injury, or vulnerability. So, you have to stand there and watch. And, you have to stand there and watch something bad happening -- just to make sure it follows the expected course instead of turning into something worse.
Did I mention that Chloe is bred to a very expensive sire a six hour drive from here? Not only did the breeding cost a fortune, the gas just to get her to and from the sire cost a fortune as well. We had to send Chloe away for almost two months to get bred -- and Percy went with her because he's nursing. It's the first time we sent an alpaca off farm for breeding. It's the first time we've had a cria off the farm. Percy was gone during the cutest part of his life. The whole thing was very stressful -- and now it looks like it will all have to be repeated.
Don't let those cuddly-cute ads on TV fool you. Alpacas are livestock -- fun livestock, relatively easy livestock, cute livestock, but livestock. Anything that can go wrong raising livestock will happen to you if you raise alpacas -- probably sooner rather than later and almost certainly when it is most financially inconvenient.
It was warm enough and dry enough to use the drum carder outside today, set up on the front porch where I could keep an occasional eye on Chloe. I re-carded the Puppies in the Wool Room blend. It took two additional passes through the carder to get all the batts uniform, but the blend is finished.
I spoke with our regular camelid vet this evening. He says he thinks it's a miscarriage, but from the symptoms, he can't be sure and that he has seen a few cases turn out fine with exactly the symptoms we are seeing. There's nothing he can do at this point. Now we monitor Chloe's attitude and temperature for two weeks. Then, three weeks from now, we can start pregnancy testing her.
Just be careful if you wish for a day more interesting than sitting and spinning.
Kim
I started by writing about the seven false starts on my blog that I've made in the past two days and how I should have saved one of the two posts I made in the same day back on the 8th. I went on to write about four paragraphs on the fence -- mostly complaining-type verbiage. I mentioned I was making good progress on Pinero's fiber and that I was probably going to start plying the next bunch today.
Then, I made the mistake of writing the following phrase ... "Of course, I could actually go and do something interesting so I have something to write about, too. This spending half the day in front of the computer trying to compose something erudite isn't necessarily that conducive to writing anything other than a blog about writer's block."
At the time, I thought nothing of it and I happily started plying until I got a double-strand break (that phrase had a different meaning in grad school) at which point I pulled a skein onto my niddy-noddy and happily started plying again.
One must be very careful what one wishes for when one mentions "interesting" days without specifying a definition of "interesting" -- particularly when one owns livestock -- particularly when said livestock are very expensive and border on being pets.
We think Chloe had a miscarriage today.
Chloe is the gray alpaca in the picture on our homepage and the model for our logo. There are more pictures of her on her Alpacanation page.
It all started sometime before lunch when Pam said Chloe was acting funny. I looked at Chloe and I didn't see anything -- if you ask me, Chloe's always acting funny.
That's one of our differences. Pam see things in our alpacas that catch her eye as being out of the ordinary, while I just see alpacas acting funny like they always do. Pam can watch the dog walk a dozen steps and know if she has to pee or poo or both -- with something better than 90% accuracy. She's the same way about the alpacas. With her coaching, I can begin to see some of what she points out to me, but I'm not in her league. And, that's part of the reason Pam does much of the animal care and I do the spinning.
One of the hard things about raising alpacas is that they are very stoic animals. Because they're prey animals, they work very hard to cover up any sign of illness, injury, or vulnerability. So, you have to stand there and watch. And, you have to stand there and watch something bad happening -- just to make sure it follows the expected course instead of turning into something worse.
Did I mention that Chloe is bred to a very expensive sire a six hour drive from here? Not only did the breeding cost a fortune, the gas just to get her to and from the sire cost a fortune as well. We had to send Chloe away for almost two months to get bred -- and Percy went with her because he's nursing. It's the first time we sent an alpaca off farm for breeding. It's the first time we've had a cria off the farm. Percy was gone during the cutest part of his life. The whole thing was very stressful -- and now it looks like it will all have to be repeated.
Don't let those cuddly-cute ads on TV fool you. Alpacas are livestock -- fun livestock, relatively easy livestock, cute livestock, but livestock. Anything that can go wrong raising livestock will happen to you if you raise alpacas -- probably sooner rather than later and almost certainly when it is most financially inconvenient.
It was warm enough and dry enough to use the drum carder outside today, set up on the front porch where I could keep an occasional eye on Chloe. I re-carded the Puppies in the Wool Room blend. It took two additional passes through the carder to get all the batts uniform, but the blend is finished.
I spoke with our regular camelid vet this evening. He says he thinks it's a miscarriage, but from the symptoms, he can't be sure and that he has seen a few cases turn out fine with exactly the symptoms we are seeing. There's nothing he can do at this point. Now we monitor Chloe's attitude and temperature for two weeks. Then, three weeks from now, we can start pregnancy testing her.
Just be careful if you wish for a day more interesting than sitting and spinning.
Kim
posted by Upper Alpacas | 8:00 PM
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