Let loose the (formerly fuzzy, now mostly naked) hounds!

Days like today on the farm quite literally make you happy to be alive! Perhaps it’s partly still the affect of post-shearing euphoria — as in “naya, naya, naya: we don’t have to do that again for 12 months” — but with the birds making their spring symphony, a wonderful breeze, 60 degrees, and nary a cloud in the sky, it was the sort of scene here that could make even the most unrepentant grump crack a smile. For the record I would classify myself as somewhat repentant grump, though I digress. This morning I was feeling so high on life in fact that when I needed go to take some pictures I even elected to walk up to the Arena under my own power instead of jumping in the car, a definite leg and lung burner as anyone that has visited us could attest to. Maybe there was something in the water today?

At this point in the management of our farm and herd there is a fairly steady and unchanging seasonal rhythm to the way things happen. The days and weeks following shearing are always one of our bigger transition periods here on the farm as we shift the herd around based upon their age, sex, and in the case of our production females, their due dates. Before the month is out roughly half of the herd — a group made up mostly of weaners, unbred younger females, and fiber boys — will find themselves living and grazing on some of our outter paddocks with little more than a water tub and a mineral feeder. Not quite yet though. Those pastures have just reached grazable length in the last week or so and some of those paddocks will support groups as large as 30 to 40 animals at times for periods of up to 2 weeks. Though we don’t have enough acreage here to practice true management-intensive grazing, we have enough that we at least get to pretend. As I said though we’re not quite ready to begin all of that just yet.

The immediate paddocks radiating off of the three barns themselves are another thing entirely though. At the two smaller barns (the Main Barn and the Stud Barn) the alpacas have had at least some, if not full, access to their immediate paddocks over the course of the winter. Not so at the Arena though where we instead create a good sized dry lot area surrounding the building for use during the cold months. Not only are the soils (all 6 to 8″ of them) and the resulting pastures on that part of the farm not able to cope with year round grazing but there is also the question of a very steep and icy hillside during the wintertime. The point being that by the time we get to early May, those paddocks surrounding the Arena have usually had close to a month to grow and really develop a good healthy crop of grass. This is grass the CCNF female herd as been looking at longingly, and occasionally sneaking a bite of through the dry lot fencing, for several weeks. So that when we do finally take down the dry lot fence and let the girls out, there is a mass outpouring of playful alpaca joy the likes of which is hard to catch during any other snap shot of time here on the farm.

Well with everyone shorn now as of Saturday evening, the humans recovered from said shearing, and the Arena pastures in great shape, we decided that today was the day to inaugurate grazing season for the 60% of the herd that lives at that barn! Jen, Kim, and Jason humored me, allowing me to sneak into the A2  paddock (the second pen/paddock on that south facing side of the Arena where our moms and newborns end up for now), video camera in hand to catch the moment of the first spring let-out onto the hillside.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJjv34C47dA

As I think you can see, the female herd pretty much exploded out of the barn! There was one humorous side show with the small cluster of remaining six month olds (they are due to be weaned from their dams later this week) absolutely refusing for several minutes to cross the edge of the dry lot area onto the grass. Not that their moms cared one iota. They left them whining and confused at the top the hill. It took a steady push from Jen and Kim before the would-be weaners decided that perhaps they wouldn’t spontaneously combust the moment they stepped onto the green stuff. Oh, the drama!