Alpaca Creep Feeders

My husband and I were just discussing our creep feeder that we set up for our crias. It is about 10' by 8' or so and just not cutting it for the five crias using it. When we first put it together three were considerable smaller than they are now at 7, 8 and 11 months and the other two had not been born. It actually looked big now that I think about it. Soon, Quinn, who is 7 months and 85+ pounds will be moving over to the boys side and that will obviously create more room. The thing is the 8 and 11 month old girls are going to fit in there for a long time to come. They are both on the petite side. I just cannot see making the door any smaller. I am now wondering if it will be something they will outgrow, as in "I'm not a baby anymore" type of growth.

There is an alpaca farm in Georgia that I know of that is actually able to put out tubs of alpaca feed - a continuous supply. I think I heard of an alpaca farm in Pennsylvania or Ohio that does the same. Part of me wants to try that in a big way but I just don't see my alpacas walking way from it until it is empty. Maybe someday I will try it with one of the smaller herds here. I don't want to be known as the Virginia alpaca farm that owns the two ton alpacas!

I was telling Chuck that the way I thought the creep feed would work is that I would put out a big dish of food and they'd go in, one or two at a time and have a bite or two and go back out to mom or to play. I was very insistent that we get the creep feed set up when one of the dams went to board at another farm and her cria was left behind to wean. At the time Princess Lea was 6 months old - she's the 8 month old I mentioned above. {Since then her dam has returned but the nursing connection was broken long enough that she is definitely weaned.} Anyway, I got it in my head that Lea needed a place to go away from the adults where she didn't have to fight for food since she didn't have her dam's help so hence the creep feed. It was never used as I expected to to be. The then three, would just go in and finish the food each time I put it out. Now they also go out and steal food from the adult females dishes when they are fed as well! Looking outside at them as I type I can see that Black Perl has joined them for some hay.

I guess we will extend the feeder space by another five feet and a couple more feeders or maybe a trough... They do seem to appreciate a place away from the adults from time to time. Especially on days like this where they don't really need the fans because it is cool (only 65!).

If I ever try the herd on feed available full time I will be sure to post the results...

Until the next time!

July 5, 2009

Surprised? Me too. It is raining today and the husband is home and doing chores. I don't usually have the luxury of computer time as close together as I have the past few days!

I answered an ad I saw on Alpaca Nation about improving my website rankings. That gained me some insight as to where my website stands and it is not looking to good. It could be worse of course. One of the reasons I started to blog was with the hopes to improve or maintain my rankings. I have a webmaster who designed my site and maintains it for me but she can only do so much. Someone has to feed her the words & pictures. As lacking as I have been with attention to the blog I have been with being creative with the written words for the site and with pictures even worse.

So, I started thinking, why isn't the blog gaining me more hits to my site? Well, I had the "aha!" moment when looking at a clients blog. That's what the labels are for! I feel pretty ignorant now (and I guess I must be pretty stupid for telling everyone!).

So, back to the search phrases that were used and where I didn't do well!
1. buy alpacas virginia 23rd spot on Google...
2. virginia alpaca farm 10th spot - got lucky I guess...
3. virginia alpaca farms 12th spot - the difference one letter makes!
4. alpaca farm virginia 12th spot
5. alpaca farms virginia 22nd spot...

Next thing I did was to look at my stats. That was eye opening too. I can see the searches that got people to my site and some of them are pretty off the wall. I had to look at some of them using the different search engines and it was kind of fun. I didn't mess up my stats by following them back to my site though.

Providing I use the labels (correctly) and get my updates made on the website I am hopeful that I will start seeing my rankings go up a bit.

Enough for this post!