Another new arrival
Posted on September 2nd, 2008 by Allen
Come out to see us at one of the many events we will be attending this fall:
Sept 13, 2008 - East Berlin Colonial Day, we will again be on the grass near the post office and food vendors. Come pick up some alpaca socks for winter. Sorry, no alpaca will be in attendence.
Sept 27 & 28, 2008 - National Alpaca Farm Day, the farm will actually be closed. We will be doing our product stand at Criative Acres Alpacas in Jarretsville, MD where you will be more than welcome to stop by and see us. John & Renee will have some wonderful alpacas there for everyone to see and visit with.
Oct 4, 18 & 25, 2008 - Ashcombe Fall Festival, come out to a wonderful time. In years past we’ve had loads of fun at this event. There’s usually a corn maze, straw pit, pumkin picking and lots of other fall events. We always look forward to the homemade apple butter. If you haven’t gotten your alpaca sweater yet, this would be a good opportunity as there is usually getting to be a nip on the air by October.
Nov 8,9,15 & 16, 2008 - Big Rock Alpaca Farm Open House, our annual open house will be the 2nd and 3rd weekends in November. Come out and see the widest selection of alpaca products that we have available. Do your Christmas shopping in a quiet rural setting. There will be alpacas available to see and feel!
We look forward to seeing you!
If you recall back at the beginning of June we had our first cutting of hay made. I’ve talked to Rick from Rick’s Custom Baling and we’ve decided to give it a little more time. We wont be getting a third cutting so we want to make the most of the second.
I do know that Rick just did a second cutting of hay for Ian over at Big Mount Alpacas.
We’ve finally come up with a name for our latest edition. We’re calling him Gaston, as in the vain character in ‘Beauty and the Beast’, and we think he has plenty of reasons to be vain. At only two months of age he already weights almost 50lbs and quite enjoys torment his mother, Snowfox and Rose who is due at the end of August. We actually got several good suggestions on names, several from John Petersam of Criative Acres Alpacas, which we may well use in the future but none of them quite fit Gaston.
Here’s a more recent head shot.
And a full body profile shot:
We have still not been able to come up with a good name for the cria. Take a look at the pictures and if you have a suggestion leave a comment. We sure could use some good ideas. No promises that we’ll use it though. After we select a name we’ll proceed with getting him registered with ARI.
One of the first things we did after the cria was born was to get Snowfox shorn as soon as possible. We would have liked to have done it Saturday morning, but when we learned it was to be near 100 degrees on Friday June 6, 2008 and still hot over the weekend, we wound up shearing Snowfox and Rose in the evenings. They aren’t the best hand shearing jobs that we’ve done, but at least the fiber is off and the girls are much more comfortable.
Here are a couple more pictures of our newest arrival. We love how dark his muzzle and feet are.
The baby is often more playful than mom. Isn’t that always the case? The kids always have more energy than mom and dad.
And after playtime comes meal time.
We just had another exciting day at Big Rock Alpaca farm, although not quite as much work as last Friday was. Snowfox finally had her first cria. It’s a little boy and he’s doing just fine. We’re not quite sure what color he is, probably light fawn with really dark pigmentation. His sire is black after all. We have not decided on a name yet.
Here is Snowfox with the baby only a couple minutes old.
And later in the day.
We are looking forward to a lot of opportunities to see him running the pasture this summer.
Did I mention in my previous post that May 30th was a big day for us! Along with getting our hay made we also were taking three alpacas (Frankie, Thomas, and Integrator) over to Paso Ligero Alpacas to get shorn. It was a big day. The shearers arrived and started work around 3:00 in the afternoon. They had already sheared 13 alpacas at a farm in New Jersey before driving the several hours to central PA.
Kim from Paso Ligero Alpacas had graciously opened her farm for several other local farms to bring animals to get shorn. There were a total of about 30 alpacas from at least six different farms. Below is a picture of Kim collecting a blanket for showing.
The shearing finished up around 8:00 PM and we all gathered for a pot luck dinner we had brought. Kim supplied the hot dogs and burgers. The shearers grabbed a couple minutes of well deserved rest and some food before they were off to a shearing somewhere in New York state.
It was a very exhausting day for everyone and several passengers fell asleep on the short ride home.
May 30th was a big day for Big Rock Alpaca Farm. With all the rain we’ve been having this spring getting good hay made was looking to be a real challenge. Rick from Rick Jones Custom Baling did a wonderful job of getting our hay made for us during one of the few three day windows of sunny weather. One of the advantages we had was that most of our field is pretty high. There was one low section that was still too wet to get into without tearing up the ground. We got nearly 300 bales from the field this year, up from 250 last year for the first cutting. The grass is getting thicker and the rain really helped it grow in good. Now hopefully we’ll continue to get some rain so we get a good second cutting which is what we’re really interested in for the alpacas. The field is all grass, primarily orchard grass which alpacas love.
Below is a picture of Rick doing the baling.
Well it’s all over! At least for us, I’m writing this post at 8:00 PM Sunday evening, having left at around 4:00 PM. There were still a lot of classes left to go and some people thought it could be going on until 8:00 or 9:00 in the evening. I sure hope they got it all wrapped up. Because of a bunch of other stuff going on at the moment this was the first year in several that I haven’t volunteered to help setup and/or tear down. I just want to thank all those that did volunteer, I know there’s a lot of work involved.
And as promised here is the picture of the boys with Dakari and their ribbons. Way to go guys!
