The running of the alpacas!

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdatWfe5cMA

As of right now, the entire south side of the CCNF Arena, which normally houses 100+ animals during the colder months of the year, is completely empty! Jen and Kim spent this morning assembling two large groups of females from that barn which sits atop the farm here. The feed groups’ mission: to rotationally graze the 20 +/- acres of pasture that are located on the upper reaches of the farm for the next 6 weeks at least. The larger of the two groups (which you can see making a run for it in the video above) is made up of pregnant females, all of whom are due later on this summer or fall. The “smaller” group, still some 30+ animals, are other adult females all of whom are either maiden yearlings or proven dams that had crias last year and were either intentionally held open over the winter because of a late fall birth (we are constantly working towards condensing our birthing season as much as possible) or because their ideal breeding match wasn’t here at the time. Since we don’t start breeding our own females here until early July, that gives most of the animals from both groups until at least that time to be out grazing on some of the outer paddocks where they are not as easily worked with. Though we will of course be checking on both feed groups on a daily basis, other than coming inside again briefly for herd health day in a couple of weeks, they will now live beneath the sun and stars with nothing more that a water tub and an outdoor mineral feeder fir the time being.

While the open females will fall back to the Arena itself around 7 /1 (not coincidentally around the same time that Precocious and Elixir will be arriving back at their VT home) and continue to graze on some of the paddocks that abut the barn itself, our expectant females will start to rotate back inside as they get within a month or so of their respective due dates. Those due girls will ultimately form up into maternity groups of 12 to 14 females (plus their crias as they are born) — grouped by due date — and though they will likewise have access to pasture during the daylight hours, they will be locked inside at night for the safety of their little ones and to avoid the possibility of any midnight births happening down in the lower corners of one of the paddocks.

In the mean time, with only two females imminently due and living out of the Arena’s warm room, it’s time for some spring cleaning. With all of the regular animal pens on the south side of the Arena currently unpopulated, we will begin our annual process of hoeing out all of the old bedding and disinfecting those areas, all in preparation for the maternity rush that will truly hit its stride in July and August. All told we are expecting some 70+ crias this year, so things will get plenty exciting once we get cranking. For now though, over 80% of the herd is out grazing — the vast majority of them away from the barns themselves — and we have lush green pastures filled with very content alpacas!

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