A Weekend of Breeding

I knew that would get your attention!

This past Friday night, the barn builders delivered our two new alpaca shelters and boy are they nice! The metal on the new barns match the metal on our house & chicken coop. For those of you that don’t know, we live in a barn ourselves. Our “barndominium” is wonderful! Built just like a pole barn, we’ve got nice, 6” walls full of insulation so heating and air conditioning costs are minimal. Care-free siding and metal roofing make it virtually maintenance free. A couple of times a year we take a hose or power-washer to it and it’s good to go for another 6-12 months. After 3 winters, we’re still working on our first tank of propane and won’t need to fill it this year either.

I got off subject there but had to mention the new shelters matching the house. J Saturday, in the early afternoon, we loaded up Shannon and her 3 week old cria Montana, or “Tanner” as we call him, and drove to Iowa. We arrived at Bacon’s Alpaca Ranch and met with Gregg Bacon, owner of Shannon’s latest love Strider of the Shire. Strider is a beautiful true black alpaca that has won numerous awards…most notable is a Supreme Reserve Color Championship in Canada. The Supreme Color Championship is an international class where the Color Champions from every color class compete. Two judges choose the Supreme Color Champ. We were also able to visit with several of Strider’s offspring that Gregg had there on his farm and from what we can tell, Strider does a nice, consistent job in passing on his nice traits to his offspring. If you’ve ever felt black velvet, you know how his cria feel…just scrumptious! After the breeding, Jon and I found a nice Mexican restaurant and had a bite to eat and then retired to our hotel room for the evening. Sunday, we got up early and repeated the breeding then loaded up and headed home. Although, heading home was a little different than the trip up to Iowa. On our return trip, we had 6 additional alpacas on the trailer! We were able to meet up with Van Walter & his son as they delivered their alpacas that are now boarding at our farm long term. Van and his wife will be relocating to the Kansas City area where Van will soon retire. They have a new grandbaby here and will be coming to settle near the kids. We are excited & honored to have Van’s alpacas in our care. His are all suri’s and very nice ones at that!

Once home, we got everyone on the scale and settled in with some hay & water in their new digs. We’ll keep an eye on everyone’s weight just to be sure everyone is eating and maintaining their weight. We may discuss a diet plan for a couple of them at a later date, once they’re all settled in and calling Shady Creek Farm their home.

Until next time…