The Farm

Last Friday saw another milestone passed on our little patch. We had the first on-site mating of any of our livestock, either alpaca or dairy goat. It has been a year since Creampuff had last given birth and she is in excellent condition, so we figured it was time for her to be introduced to Sappa, who has worn out a trench pacing up and down the fence line that separates him from our ladies.

We found an empty paddock and left our two love birds to get to know each other...but no introduction was required, as Creampuff went straight to the ground (the alpaca mating acceptance position) and Sappa was soon set about his business.

We'd opted for a paddock mating rather than a stockyard and at "half time", Sappa and Creampuff decided to pull up stumps and move their show over against the fence next to all the other females. This prompted three of them to go to ground next  to the fence (alpaca for "me too!") while another nibbled Sappa's ear while he continued the show with Creampuff.

I was too busy laughing to put my camera to good use.

Alpaca males have a fibro-elastic penis which has a dexterity that most human males would envy but from what I've seen, they can have that, there appeared to be far too much complaining from Sappa to make it worthwhile!

Mating with alpacas is a little hit and miss. Alpaca females ovulate in response to the act of mating and the presence of semen. So now we wait a while, then re-unite Sappa and Creampuff again. If Creampuff spits at Sappa and runs off, she's pregnant. If she submits for mating, she's not.

That's as precise and scientific as it gets with alpacas.

Today was the Dairy Goat Society of Australia Tasmanian Branch Southern Kid and Goatling Show at the Royal Hobart Showgrounds. We only took along Jesse-Belle and Basil to this show, making for a light goat handling day :)

Jesse-Belle brought home:

• 1st Place, Toggenburg Goatling 12-24 months un-kidded
• Reserve Champion, Junior Doe

This was Jesse-Belle's second show and the second time she has brought home both 1st place in the Toggenburgs and Reserve Champion. We're happy with her showings so far and hopefully she'll continue her run as she matures.

Basil is only three months old and this was his first show. Basil managed to snag:

• 3rd Place, Buck Kid under 6 months, any breed

The judge had some fine words regarding Basil, particularly as he was half the age of the other buck kids. We're fairly excited about this little Austrlian Brown's future.

Below are a few happy snaps from the day, click one for the gallery:

Once upon a time there was a handsome prince named Hamish. Prince Hamish wanted nothing more than goats milk to fill his rumbling belly.

"Mother dearest," said Hamish, very eloquently for a 3 month old human, "Would you be an absolute darling and fetch me some fresh goats milk?".

Being a loving mother, Hamish's mum left Hamish asleep in his climate controlled, hermetically sealed crib, where the radio is always tuned to Classic FM, much to Daddy's chagrin.

Mummy came across a large white animal whose name was Creampuff. "Are you are goat?" Mummy asked. "No, I'm an Alpaca" replied Creampuff.

Mummy approached a large, light brown animal but before mummy could ask anything she rudely pushed past mummy saying "Get out of my way, I want my food!".

"Goodness me!" said mummy, a little flabergasted, "who was that?". "That was Callisto. My name is Grace Kelly. How are you?". "I'm fine, now" replied mummy. "Are you a goat?". "I'm a Cria, a baby Alpaca" said Grace Kelly.

"We're all Alpacas here" said Penelope.

Then in unison, they said "You could ask over there...".

So mummy wandered in the direction suggested by the Alpacas and she came across two lovely little animals who introduced themselves as Pixie and Lala.

"Are you goats?" asked mummy. The goats replied "Yes!" and jumped around with glee. "Can I milk you?" mummy asked ever so politely.

"Only if I can eat your hair" said Lala. So mummy agreed and the milking began.

"I want you to cut down a willow tree with...a herring!" said Pixie. So mummy sent daddy off and when he returned, again the milking began.

When all the milking was over, mummy had got 100ml from each goat, not bad for their first milking.

"I wonder what goats milk tastes like?" mummy pondered aloud, so she had just a little taste (or two). "Delicious!" was the verdict.

...and young Prince Hamish was very happy indeed.

This morning Penelope gave birth to Grace Kelly. Although the dodgy camera photo does her no justice, Grace Kelly is what they call a light fawn. Not white, not brown, I'm sure you get the idea.

Penelope and Grace Kelly enjoy a balmy spring morning

We were trying to reproduce Penelope's luscious colours but the black male we were trying to mate her with wasn't producing strong swimmers (and he died a few months later). We switched to a light fawn male and the result 12 months later is Grace Kelly.

Welcome Grace Kelly.

While the boys were visiting me last week, I had them put to work of course :)

Ewan helped me with getting the bolts into this old blackboard and the wall studs so we could hang it using heavy duty window sash cord. The photo to the left shows it mounted on the wall and put to "good" use by the kids and Kristina.

Now though, the blackboard is covered with our plans for Alpaca world domination, should we choose to head down that path.

As twilight merged into the darkness of the night sky, there was a little excitement in one of our paddocks last night. Attempting to get one of our Alpacas, Creampuff, to join the others for feeding I discovered that she had given birth to her cria. In the excitement and the looming darkness, I called Kristina over and attempted to have the little one follow us and Creampuff up to the shelter for feeding. We had completed that shelter on Sunday evening in expectation of this cria's birth.

We were fairly excited. Our first Alpaca baby had arrived. The cria's breathing was a little rattly and raspy to my ears but I didn't think too much of it. When Kristina arrived the wobbly little cria made some almost excited steps towards her and nuzzled Kristina's legs.

Noting that the breathing was more laboured and forced than raspy and rattly, Kristina knelt down to have a closer look at our new pride and joy as well as to examine the breathing. In the darkness, Kristina found that something was definitely wrong with the cria's face and went to fetch a torch.

I don't think Kristina was prepared for the shock of what she found. Neither of us were.

When the torch light fell upon the cria's face you could see it was severely twisted, a congenital condition we soon learnt was called "wry face". I'm not going to be posting any photos here but I will say that an animal with it's nasal passage where it's right cheek should be is an unsettling sight.

A twist of > 60° is considered severe. This poor little cria had a twist between 80-90°.

We made some calls to our breeder for some advice and diagnosis. We knew that breathing through the nasal passage was impossible, which meant suckling was not going to happen. Kristina checked the mother's udders and her milk had not arrived. Alpacas deliver milk once suckling has commenced, the absence of milk meant that the cria had not been suckling.

By now the cria was between 4 and 6 hours old, it hadn't eaten, it hadn't suckled. It could in fact do neither and walking was becoming increasingly difficult as the minutes passed. We put a coat on the cria and placed it in the shelter as the cold of a crisp May night closed in.

We watched the cria's condition deteriorite for another couple of hours. There was no suckling despite the attentiveness of it's mother, Creampuff. We were unable to help it suckle, eat or drink.

After much discussion, consultation and expert advice we came to the conclusion that this cria was faced with a long, cold, torturous night as it slowly starved to death unless we intervened.

With suckling and eating not being a possibility for this cria, we summoned our neighbour and his rifle to make the trauma of the night as short as possible for it.

Alapca parents are known to fret and pine for weeks if their cria "disappear". In consideration of this we returned the body of the beautiful, sweet, cria to it's mother so that nature could take it's course and her grief would be as short as possible.

Creampuff has spent all of today and into this evening watching over her little cria, clicking, cooing and guarding.

Once Creampuff has grieved and abandoned the body of her cria, we're going to bury it in the wildlife corridor and plant a tree over it's grave to remember the beautiful little cria and it's brief life as the first alpaca born at our place.

As Easter is all about spring and it's burst of life in the Northern Hemisphere (ignoring the wee superstitious folk who adopted it for their imaginary friend), it's all about the burst of life here at the moment too.

We've had our three alpacas arrive today, after 12 months agistment at Inapari Alpacas.

Our ladies are all pregnant now too, taking the tally of pregnant ladies on our farm to four - three alpacas and one human :) All four are due between May and September, which will make for a busy winter. I think the spacing ought to be sane though.

There was a weird stand-off moment as the sheep and goats all sized up the new arrivals, eerily reminded me of a scene from "Babe" ( I could almost hear Magda's voice...).

We're also yet to determine a naming theme for our alpaca cria, if you have any suggestions please drop a comment :)

Anyway, here are some happy snaps:

Creampuff

Callisto

Penelope

The lake dam is full! Except we forgot our camera on the last trip.

The shed we're planning is starting to take shape, in our minds at least and we've staked out our preferred site and done some preliminary sketches, which have been roughed out on napkins, of course ;)

Paddock plans are advancing and the first shovel loads of earth have been turned as the earthship style animal shelters have had their location sorted. Some construction photos will be up after the next trip, along with more detail on how we went about it.

This trip was mostly about planning, finishing fencing and as usual, planting. We planted the  following seedlings at our front gate /access road:

x2 Royal Grevillea (Grevillea victoriae)
x2 Silky Grevillea (Grevillea sericea)
x2 Oval Leaf Grevillea (Grevillea miqueliana)
x2 White Wings Grevillea (Grevillea 'White Wings')
x2 Grevillea Canterbury Gold (Grevillea 'Canterbury Gold')
x2 Grevillea Poorinda Peter (Grevillea 'Poorinda Peter')

We also planted our first apple tree in a prominent location near the lake dam:

x1 Apple Tree (Double grafted Red Delicous & Granny Smith)

Kristina has converted the bus into a nursery, so it looks like a greenhouse will soon be on my construction list. Here's what Kristina has got growing so far in her providence nursery:

x25 Cheesewoods
x25 Golden Rosemary

On this trip Kristina planted the following additional seeds:

x25 Mountain Pepper (Tasmannia Lanceolata)
x25 Native Currant
x50 Native Thyme
x50 Button Grass

When you add the below non-providence seeds:

x25 Fuscia Gum

We're going to run out of space in the bus pretty soon!

Fencing, lots of it. Not with an epee but with poles, star pickets, pole drivers, wallaby wire and the neighbours big blue tractor. Best part of a kilometre so far. That's what we've been doing lately and we've still got a fair bit to go yet until this section is finished.

As the photo gives away, it's been a little wet even though rainfall has so far been below average for June.

We've bought three alpacas, Penelope, Creampuff and Callisto. Both Creampuff and Callisto are pregnant so I guess that makes five. Penelope will hopefully be mated in late spring / early summer.

Here's a couple of snaps of the fencing:

We've also been busy planting with another dozen plants going in along the creek line, continuing the same two varieties we've already been planting:

- 6 Swamp Gums (Eucalyptus ovata)
- 6 Blackwoods (Acacia melanoxylon)

Taking the total of each to twelve. The wallabies have been enjoying our planting of un-intentional free feed so we've taken some of the tyres we were going to use as walls of the sheep shelter, some stakes and a little chicken wire to keep them at bay. Let's see how this goes
:)

There's a crater where one of our paddocks used to be. At least it looks like a crater but it is actually a dam (or small lake?) that we built at the bottom of the water course of two springs that flow from the hillside. It's filling up steadily and soon that lump in the middle will hopefully be the island we envisaged it to be. It's also a whole lot bigger than it appears (you could put a house in there):

Aside from having huge craters made, we've been busy planting. We're re-vegetating the creek line with a variety of shrubs and trees. At this stage we're only planting the trees and we've planted:

- 6 Swamp Gums (Eucalyptus ovata) which grow to about 25M high
- 6 Blackwoods (Acacia melanoxylon) which grow to about 12M high

Although I don't trust those height estimates as the blackwoods already on site are some of the largest trees I've ever seen and easily exceed 12M and Wikipedia has them at up to 45M.

The two tree types are going to form a two layered screen along the creek line, with the Swamp Gums being closest to the creek, in the soil that is the wettest for the longest part of the year and the Blackwoods being the next line.

The Blackwoods were chosen because they are an impressive tree, water tolerant and will make a good screen. The Swamp Gums because they are fast growing, love getting their feet wet and native wildlife (particularly possums) love their leaves.

Here's a recent photo of us at the farm.