Go forth and eat grass

The exodus from the winter/spring dry lots has begun in earnest here at CCNF. After more than a month of having to keep animals off of the pastures at the Main Barn for reasons mostly related to keeping their fleeces clean, Sunday there was a mass stampede as all of the feed groups charged out…

It’s the fleece, stupid!

It’s the fleece, stupid!

Happy Mother’s Day to all you mothers out there! Three quarters of the Lutz family (though oddly enough not the mother) at CCNF are spending the day recovering from the 3 day shearing juggernaut that finally came to a merciful conclusion around 5:30 yesterday afternoon. We ended up doing 66 critters on the final day,…

Elixir gets naked!

Day 1 of shearing 2012 is in the books and we ended up doing a nice round 70 alpacas today. Only 137 to go! Below is the video I shot this morning of Futurity Judges’ Choice winner, CCNF Elixir, getting shorn. Minus a blip just before the blanket gets finished it’s pretty much start to…

Catching a break…

Funny isn’t it how back in early April we were so desperate for rain and it wouldn’t come, yet with two days to go before shearing we just got over 1.5″. To put that in perspective, had it been cold out that would have been the largest single snow fall of the winter of 2011/2012!…

Shearing prep

The really good news around here is that the cycle of seemingly endless dry weather finally went on hiatus while we were away at the Futurity a couple of weeks ago. The bad news though is that now that spring has decided to act like itself again, it is insisting on raining in the days…