Meet Valentina!
She is our alpha female and protects the herd from any perceived danger. She particularly does not like dogs and will charge them and try to stomp them when they are in the pasture with the alpacas. Valentina LOVES, LOVES, LOVES pellets and will let you rub her neck. She always seems to have a piece of hay sticking out of her mouth. She's had three crias: Wailea, Likes to Run, and Nox. Valentina's fleece won Color Champion in the 200r Nationals.
With Spring definitely making up it's mind that it is time to settle in, there has been a flurry of activity around the little ranch! We will be shearing the alpacas on May 15th. That is always a fun day. And all that lovely fleece! We've got MANY boxes of fleece that need to be skirted and sent off to a mill to be processed into yarn and roving. I'm thinking I'll do half and half so that I'll have yarn ready to dye and put up for sale and also some roving to dye as well!
We are considering which herdsire to breed our dams to. We have the fabulous Bruxo line covered and are considering breeding to a Prince Mahagony son so that we have that line covered as well. We had three fine crias born last September/October (all Macgyver babies) so we're thinking it's time to get some other strong genetics into our herd.
Learned some very interesting things about our pasture grass this past week - our grass is mostly fescue and we learned that fescue harbors endophytes that can cause complications to pregnant alpacas; especially if they ingest it during their third trimester. We've read articles that say the boys will be fine on it but the girls wouldn't do so well. Options are to toally recondition the pasture or keep the pastures as is and dry lot the pregnant females during the last trimester of their pregnancy.
Check out our website: http://www.alpacasencantadas.com/
She is so cute and her fleece looks SO soft. I'd love to pet some sometime!
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