Those other days...

When we started the blog we had good intentions of posting once or twice a week.  Seems like we are insanely busy every day with stuff going on, but is it really all noteworthy?  Especially some of the routine and mundane.  Then there is the stuff that is just not so nice.  We wanted this to stay pretty upbeat and positive, but there are realities of raising any kind of animal that just aren't that way.  So this ended up to be one of those weeks.

After struggling and fighting to survive, we lost one of our June cria on Tuesday.  He made it to the 1 month mark, but he was never really out of the woods.  We did all the intervention we could do to keep his strength up and get some consistent weight gain building.  There were a couple bright and hopeful times we kept thinking we were almost there and then we would lose ground again.  Tuesday morning we found him very shakey as he was losing his fight to continue.

He always wanted to hang with the other cria~

He had some of the most amazing fleece we have seen on a newborn.
In the scheme of alpaca cria cuteness, he was off the charts!

It's always hard to lose any.  It is even sadder to see an alpaca mom display the distress for her lost cria.  Anyone raising alpacas that has been through this knows what I'm talking about, they are amazing animals and some of the best moms nature has created.  We will miss him too~

I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.
Jack London

The Name Game...

We've had close to 90 cria born now since we started raising alpacas.  We are always getting questions about how we come up with names for them all.  Heck, this is a question I'm often asking or wondering of other alpaca breeders too!  Some have definitely been more challenging then others.  We have a few themes we like to use.  Sometimes a name just pops in your head when you see that cria and it sticks.  Sometimes one will go quite awhile with no official name and lots of little nicknames get attached, some that stick and are always used regardless of what that long official, sometimes stuffy name might be.  And of course, they are all little punkin's! 

One angle is to incorporate the Herd Sires name into the cria's name, especially when it's a superstar stud and you want to highlight that.  With Snowmass Golden Victory we wanted to connect him to all his cria and have used Golden in the girls names and Victory in the boys name.  Here's a few of the 2011 GV crop so far this year... 


Moonshadow's Golden Treasure, purchasing her mom
set us on a very calculated path to result in this girl, plus
her aloofness suits this name~

 

Moonshadow's Victory's Klondike, this guy is built
like a brick and dense as can be, plus has some hidden
gold color in that fleece~

 

Moonshadow's Victory's Spirit, first off he is full of
spirit, not to mention he definitely shows off what we
hoped to see in Golden Victory offspring~

We actually have a running list of potential names.  Sometimes it is useful and we find something we like that seems to suit the personality of the new cria.  Just as often, it seems like the list grows longer then any of them get used.  Then when it comes to boys we try to factor in something that could be "studly" with some fun marketing potential.  Or do we just have a fun name that suits the personality of a boy who will be a wonderful fiber producer. 

Moonshadow's Crockett, quite the character and adventurer, always seems
 to be in the midst of everything and loves to be in front of the camera~

Sometimes we have that special female, like Moonshadow's Obsession aka MO, who we want to recognize in the naming of her cria.  Our "MO line" that I've mentioned in past blogs.  MO's cria are some of those very few that might actually have a name picked out before they are born.  This could be tricky sometimes not knowing whether you are having a boy or a girl, so far we've lucked out and had a gender appropriate name picked out.  I will admit when the power of positive thinking fails us, we do have a back up plan.


Moonshadow's Monique, my son threw this name out in
March for MO's cria, we were certainly counting on a girl,
luckily that worked out!  Even though the name came before
the girl it seems to suit her quite well~

For those who always wonder how do we keep track of them all, we keep lists of course!  All of our cria are registered, so we do have the ARI database record.  We also use a herd management database to manage our herd.  To keep things simple, we have recorded birth dates and names of every cria born at Moonshadow on the nursery barn wall.  Always impressive when the vet or company asks about a specific DOB and we can quickly come up with it.  ;-)  For us, it's just a nice visual on how far we've come since we started in 2002.

Destination Moonshadow

Active Moms & Tots from Kent

We have had such a variety of ranch visits lately it has kept us too busy to write a new post, so here I'll have to cover the past week's schedule. 

It started last week with the sweetest couple, Gloria and Richard, who came in their RV on a road trip from CA.  We are a host destination for Harvest Hosts and have met some wonderful people.  Richard is a retired finish carpenter and insisted on helping us turn our re-purposed building into a hen house. 

What great timing for us to have a visit from someone with Richard's
skill and experience.  He installed a window in our future hen house, more
on the story of our re-purposed building conversion later~

As Gloria and Richard were leaving we had another van load of senior citizens showing up for a ranch tour from another local assisted living center.  We love seeing these folks staying active and getting out and about.  There is nothing like a bunch of cute cria running around to put a smile on anyone's face!

Monday we had a group from Active Moms and Tots of Kent.  This was a pretty large group all at once, but the kids were so well behaved, the alpacas were all willing to be quite social.
 

Nothing like a little willow leaves to entice the alpacas to come over
and say hi to the kids.

One of the moms, Kristen Jordan, took some wonderful photos of their visit with the kids interacting with the alpacas.  To see them all click on her name to link to her photo album on SmugBug.  This was one of my favorties.  Thought it was so cute how this little guy appeared to know exactly how he should be looking at this little cria's fleece.

Future alpaca breeder in training~

Today we had a visitor from Maine whose son was so excited about alpacas visiting a ranch was something he wanted to do while in Auburn, WA.  We learned they discovered where we were by coming up as one of the top things to do while visiting Auburn....got to love Google!  For us, we are thrilled with the range of people that are interested in visiting and learning about alpacas and are happy to have the opportunity to share what we are doing at Moonshadow.