Oh my goodness. I am so embarrassed I am not sure I should even be posting! This should prove interesting since the last time I posted was in January!?! Yikes.
Well, lets do the easy recaps – the alpaca shows for the year so far…
My year as a show superintendent started with the Carolina Alpaca Celebration which was in February and held at the Cabarrus Arena and Event Center in Concord, NC. What an interesting weekend! It snowed on check-in day which made life somewhat miserable for all who had to be out in it. Inside, everything ran smoothly. I was fortunate enough to have Joni Webster and Judy Schroeder working with me for the weekend and have to say we make a good team. Amanda VandenBosch judged the suris and female huacayas with Janie Hicks as her apprentice. Tim Lavan bailed us out at just about the last minute and judged the huacaya males. Seems like everyone had a good time for the most part.
Next show was the Palmetto Alpaca Classic, a small show put on by the Alpaca Small Farm Network. This year they brought in the Marines to help put on the show at the new venue in North Augusta, South Carolina. We lost a few regulars to the show due to the change in dates – the weekend was shared with the Best of the Midwest show up in OH and the Virginia Classic. I have to say that it was probably the most fun I have had in a long time at a show. OK, the workload was light… I could have fun! We had Wade Gease judging all the huacayas and Kathy Klay judging the suris. Kathy also judged the fleeces – Judy Schroeder was the fleece show super. Wade played to the audience really well and held them captive. I only hope there were people in the audience looking to get into the business because they had a rare opportunity in that it isn’t often a halter show judge can take time like he did talking about what and why he was placing as he was. Very nice. My daughter joined me as my assistant for this show, Judy as I said was fleece show super and Joni came by too – her husband Ken made an application for me to use for my classes.
Next up was the California Classic out in Pleasanton, CA outside of Oakland. This was my second year supering that show – this year the judges were Sara Jane Maclennan and Amy Bliss Miller. Had a funny thing happen on the way to the show. I was sitting in the Denver airport waiting for my flight. I noticed this gentleman sitting across from me and sat there trying to place who he reminded me of. It had to be a resemblance – who would I possibly know at the Denver airport. OK – so yes, I know Sarah Jane is from CO but she is only needed at the venue on Friday early evening and this was Wednesday. Well, it finally dawned on me that it was Hugh Maclennan. We had met the previous November at AlpacaFest West. Sara Jane was around in the next bank of seats. She had gone into a store and try as he might he couldn’t spot her… Then he said “Oh there she is! You know I still see her with red hair!” They were traveling out early to do some site seeing in the Malibu area… The show was a nice show, always is – put on by Calpaca. I had already had a “small world” happening during registration that compounded during the show… While checking through ARI certificates I stopped dead one night when I saw one of my alpacas listed on the certificate. Sure enough, her grand-cria was being shown! Of course I shared that with the exhibitor and we had a chuckle over it. Well, on the way to dinner Saturday night Sara Jane asked if I knew someone here in VA and it turned out it was the person I bought “grandma” from. Sara Jane went on to talk about how she had “grandma’s” daughter on her ranch for breeding years ago. The daughter was the last cria “grandma” had prior to our purchasing her back in 2004 or 2005… What Sara Jane didn’t know and what I couldn’t tell her was that the offspring from that breeding was entered in the show! And, you know Sara Jane came up to me after the show and asked if it was him? She “saw” her sire… Imagine that? With all the alpacas a judge looks at and so many years later? I was impressed and a little blown away since she got to me before I could get to her to tell her!
In May I had the pleasure and honor to be show superintendent for the AOBA National Show. It was more work than I want to think about today, a lazy August day, but just the same I had a blast. There were glitches here and there but we dealt with as they came up and I think all went well. We had over a thousand alpacas which is the most I have had to date. The venue was excellent and the overall experience a great one. I worked with seven judges for this show. Amanda VandenBosch, Peter Kennedy, Wade Gease, Ken Hibbits, Sharon Loner, Helen Humphreys and Linda Hayes. You’ll remember that we had Amanda back in February at the CAC show? Well, at the show we found out that she does like her afternoon tea. Joni and Judy were with me at the National show and remembered that. Actually, I had brought tea bags and an electric tea kettle for hot water -planned on just using a paper cup. Well, J & J decided to stop at the Goodwill store we passed going to and fro every day to see if they could pick up a tea cup. I think it was Judy who actually did the shopping. She came back to the hotel with a platter to use as a tray, a tea cup, sugar dish and creamer – all matching. Amanda got a kick out of it when she saw it on the ribbon table. Her last Color Championship class on Sunday was lined up and waiting for her to announce the Champion and Reserve when she had her ring steward walk over carrying the tray et al and Amanda said something like “You don’t mind if I have a spot of tea do you?” I was laughing and know I heard the audience laugh. Not quite sure that the class laughed all that much though. I think it really did tickle her as she asked if she could take her service home! I had to say no… we need it for the next show! (She’s judging at the VAOBA Expo in October…) Anyway, long job but it went well and I’m looking daily for the RFP for the 2011 show. Had a great time working with the AOBA office too!
So, that’s it so far for this year… We are gearing up now for the VAOBA Alpaca Expo – fifth year this year! It is being held in Lexington, Virginia on October 16-17. Judy won’t be working wiah me for this show – she’s fleece show super. Joni is coming up from Charlotte, NC and hopefully my daughter will be joining me this year as well. We have Wade Gease judging fleeces, Diana Timmerman judging Huacaya & Suri females and Amanda VandenBosch judging Huacaya and Suri Males. Linda Hayes is judging performance for us. Then I have the AlpacaFest West show in November. It is held in the City of Industry, CA. I just recently found out that the city is one of businesses – there are only something like 400 residents. The venue is very nice and the weather was wonderful last year. This year they are having Ruth Elvestad and David Freidman as judges. Joni is coming with me and will be very impressed with the buffet the hotel serves on Saturday night… I am already dieting!
Now, let me try to recap the rest of life for this year…
We had a couple of births here on the farm. Nottingham Hollow’s Lady Emma delivered her first cria on May 21st while I was at the National show. She had a little boy, fawn of course (because that’s what we always seem to have here) who we later named National Treasure. I wanted to pull the Nationals in somehow… Then on June 8, Charmed Princess Curiosity delivered her first cria, a little white girl with the softest fleece yet. Her name is Charming Angel of Dreaming Dragon. Nottingham Hollow’s Friar Tuck is sire to both and their birth brought back fond memories of their conceptions. When Tuck and Emma were together she was walking back and forth, tolerating him riding her and enjoying his song. She wasn’t getting it though. He dismounted, walked up alongside her and cushed. She looked down, he got up, mounted her and down she went! She just needed the visual. Princess was maybe another week later. We had even had the vet out to check her and make sure she was ready. The game plan was to expose them to each other every three days until the stars aligned. Well, that was short lived as the first time we exposed her to him she went down. Both ladies took on the first shot. Both ladies did wonderfully as maiden mothers. Now the two cria are inseparable – might just as well be fraternal twins the way they are glued to each other. They run and play every day, no matter how hot & humid it is; every day they choose a different auntie to nap with and they are the biggest pains in the backside to the November crias!
Earlier this month we had a double loss. In December we had Jade come to us and she was not very thrifty. In pretty bad condition most probably due to a chronic intestinal disorder, we think brought on by a heavy parasite load at some point when she was younger, possibly when she was a cria. She was supposedly pregnant and due in March. Well, I didn’t doubt that she had been pregnant at some point but dust didn’t see that she was. Very trim. On May7th my partner was up ultra-sounding girls we bred in the fall and on Monday she had gone out to see the first two crias we had here out of her stud one last time before heading home. As she passed Jade laying down in the barn she saw a protrusion in Jades belly. When Dawn reached down to touch it it moved right away from her touch! She came in and said she hated to tell us this but she thought that was an elbow and Jade was in fact pregnant. Now, last year Jade had been bred to Amerikhan Legend. If this pregnancy was from that breeding it meant Jade was 355 days pregnant that day. Well, enough time passed that there was no way this pregnancy was from that breeding. That now meant we had a “Who’s your Daddy” arriving…. whenever. Fast forward to July 25th. That weekend, the 24th and 25th were excruciatingly hot – Saturday the heat index was 115 and Sunday I think it was 106. On Sunday the 25th around afternoon meal time Jade came out of the barn, stopped at the poop pile, took about four steps, cushed and lay her head down. I immediately thought heat stress and went right out and tried to get her up. She wasn’t having any of it. Got the hose and sprayed her as best I could, got Chuck to help me get her up and moved. She had cushed in a prior (dried up) poop spot but was now in icky mud. We put her on a halter and she got right up, was hosed again mostly to clean her off and brought to dry ground. Her temp was only 102 and I don’t feel the amount of hosing we gave was enough to bring it down so I suspected then it wasn’t heat stress but I wasn’t sure aside from may labor what it might be. She refused her pellets which wasn’t Jade at all. I fed her yogurt and probiotics… The next morning she was up and at ‘em, ate like she had just discovered food and enjoyed a spray with the other girls. It was hot but not excessive. Chuck was out and about until around 11:30am. From then until he went back out around 2:00 pm I watched her in the barn cam, I thought doing her usual. Her spot in the barn was in perfect view of the camera, up against the tack room wall. She would cush there with her head at the water bucket and her back end near (almost in) the poop pile. So much so that we referred to both as Jade’s. So, any time she moved, I saw her. Up and down – drank a lot of water and pooped a couple of times too. Long story shorter we discovered that she had a still born in the poop pile and delivered the placenta right with it. She was actually rather “bright”. Enjoyed it when we hosed her down, got into both hay bins and ate a good meal late that afternoon. We were rather horrified almost immediately. Not that it was a still born (a black boy with white markings identical to hers) – we were actually thankful. We were planning on supplementing but had been watching her weight and really were torn because we thought we needed to totally feed instead of supplement. Jade was known to be an excellent mother and we felt taking the cria away from her was equally as bad as allowing her to nurse it. We worried for her either way. So, that was taken out of our hands and she seemed to be relieved as well. Over the next few days she began skipping meals. What had horrified us was her appearance and the fact she weighed less than a hundred pounds. We had been told her typical non-pregnant weight was 112-114 and her very pregnant weight was 125. Before the still birth she weighed 128. After she dropped down to 94. We threw the kitchen sink at her but it turned out it was a losing battle. She lost her fight on July 30th. Talk about grieving. This couldn’t have hit us harder than if she was a home grown – when I think we had her here for less than a year… just can’t imagine it could have hurt more. We of course were doing all the supportive care we could; I hope that goes without saying. We were in contact with our vet, It was just too little too late as it turned out. We found out afterward that we had some misinformation about her history. That was unfortunate but I am not sure it would have made any difference. The poor dear is at peace now. A friend told me that “you’ll meet up again someday when this black and white alpaca with a cria that looks just like her pronks up to you – you’ll recognize her”.
The only other notable as far as animals go is that we lost a chicken and re-homed the remaining chicken to our daughter’s house. There she is the granny of some chicks who are just coming into their egg laying purpose. She enjoys scratching in the vegetable garden and will hopefully last a while.
Let’s see. VAOBA. I am again President of VAOBA. I was nominated to run for President Elect back in February (I think), elected and took over as President this summer. We have a really energetic board this go around and I am hopeful we are bale to rebuild the membership numbers to what they once were. I was disheartened to see there are only 140 something AOBA members in Virginia. A couple of years ago we had that many in the affiliate. It’s just after renewal time and we are down to 55 or 56 members now. I know there are more who will be renewing that probably didn’t due to vacation or whatever but will around the show. I hope so anyway!
Chucks’ sister has done about all the fighting she can against the Stage 4 cancer that has moved in on her. It was almost a year ago that they found it had metastasized and was in her liver and lung. She underwent IL2 treatments that really wreaked havoc on her and left her fragile. I have wondered over the months if she’s be stronger now if she hadn’t tried that course of treatment. We’ll never know. It could have worked but just wasn’t meant to be. After those failed but she had recovered enough to try something else she did the heavy duty chemo. That didn’t touch the tumors either. Next thing was a compassionate drug. I don’t remember the drug but a compassionate drug is given when there is nothing else to try and is basically human drug testing. We were all pretty hopeful. In the midst of those treatments Susan and Jamie came down here for a visit. That was on May 25th and lasted a few days. We were eternally grateful to Susan for agreeing to make the visit and to Jamie for orchestrating it. When you are on a farm there aren’t easy ways to get away… By them coming down we were able to say good bye without speaking the words and Dee and the kids had the same opportunity. A week later when Susan went in for the next treatment it was postponed because she was experiencing lack of feeling in one hand and she wasn’t able to hold onto things with it. Turned out she now had two brain tumors. One was in the memory area of the brain but the other was the one at the base of her brain and controlled all of the automatic functions. Even though Susan really didn’t want to fight the fight any more she agreed to have surgery. Her daughter gave her permission to pass during surgery if she wanted to and we all held our collective breath. She came out of surgery saying the she was surprised but that she apparently wasn’t finished here yet. A couple of weeks ago they found the tumor had grown back or a new one grew in a much shorter time. She was accepted into Hospice and was actually very happy with that. Since then she’s had a day trip to the farm where her horse is boarded and from the sounds of it, tons of visitors. It probably won’t be too long now though and I find myself wondering every day if we’ll get the call that day or not. She’s a great lady and I am going to miss her in the biggest way.
Well, I feel like I have been at this for hours. It’s time to get back to work and check to see how the testing is going for our show to be able to accept credit card payments… Registration opens on Sunday and I feel we are racing to the finish line.
Until the next time…. I really hope it isn’t as long the next time as it was this time….
}coming across the product again was a great thing. Would you like to know what the product is already? It is called Stall Skins. The best I can describe it is a cross between felt and pellon. It is black and about a quarter inch thick. The felted side is put down against the ground and the smooth, somewhat coated feeling side is walked upon. It doesn’t sound like it would last does it? Well, it is an equine product and said to last about six years with horses. I figure it will take about $600 worth to do my barn floor. That will be in one piece and it will be fixed to the walls (baseboard)all around. The only bedding that will be required will be in the winter – we’d probably put down some straw for warmth. The trick to success will be to prepare the floor ahead of time. Now that they are relieving themselves in the barn no matter what has been done to discourage them, it is getting a bot smelly in there and certainly not helping with the fly situation. The floor/ground (it/s dirt/clay) needs to have a trench dug about 2′ deep with rock put in and then the ground angled to drain into that. On top of the gravel we will need to put down some landscape cloth and then cover the whole floor with either gravel dust or coarse sand. We will level the floor and tamp that down really well. Then we will install the Stall Skin. From that point on we should only have to sweep up poop and the urine will have drained away. Supposedly it won’t matter where they do their “duty” as it will all slope away into the leach pit. Oh yeah, once a month or so you spray it down (I am sure only where they go) with pine-sol or something and the odors stay away. We will also do the ground under at least one of our overhangs, probably both. My only concern is the fabric is black and one overhang does get sun almost all day. The other is shaded except in winter so it is a good candidate for being successful. I will keep you posted. This is a fall project – can’t see us digging out there in 90 degree plus weather… Not these northerners!