Where Have I Been?

Stuff happens. Between trying to make ends meet on only one income, the extra expense of the farm, some medical issues, well I could go on and on but who would listen.

Anyway, I am back and have a lot of news to catch up on. As I have mentioned there are a lot of expenses involved in alpaca farming. One major expense is the agistment. That's right, agistment. Agistment originally referred specifically to the proceeds of pasturage in the King's forest in Jolly Olde England. Today it is the fee an alpaca farmer charges to an alpaca owner for care, board and feed. The agistment or gist covers normal care and husbandry, grain, water and hay or pasture if there is any, basically it's room and board for alpacas that don't have a farm to live on yet. You can avoid this expense completely by making sure your farm is ready for your alpacas before you buy any. Typical agistment fees run between $2.50 to $3.50 per day per animal. You can calculate how expensive that can get each month, especially with more than a few animals!

In our situation we had a verbal arrangement for the agistment that had been working quite well. Unfortunately things change and without going into a lot of detail the farm where we were keeping our animals asked for more money. We had originally planned that Andrea's income would be the funding for our farm but that had been cut short when she was laid off. So here we were with nine alpacas being boarded or agisted, no funds to compete fencing and shelters on our farm, and now the farm was asking for more money.

Here is where things got dicey. It's worked out OK for us but only by the skin of our teeth. In for a penny in for a pound I always say. We took out a loan to cover the costs of fencing, fence installation, and shelters. Please, I beg of you do not do it this way. We were forced into the situation when Andrea lost her job but this is a lesson well learned and something you should be vary cautious about. Make sure you have adequate funding to build your farm, purchase your animals and have an emergency stash for EMERGENCIES! When Andrea lost her job we had already invested about $5,000 so as I said, in for a penny in for a pound. We soldiered on but again THIS IS NOT THE WAY TO DO IT!

But we did. We got our neighbor to come help bush hog the area we wanted to clear for pasture, found a great contractor to build our fence, bought a couple of Shelter Logic buildings for the alpacas and set them up, spent some money on some panels to construct a catch pen, bought some business cards with the picture below as the background, packed up our herd and brought them to our farm in Louisa. They moved in on October 25, 2015.

Alpaca Kisses 4 U

They have been here five months next week and are the happiest bunch of alpacas I have ever known. They have had snow almost two feet deep, rain coming down in buckets and do you think they will use the shelters. Not on a bet. As one alpaca farmer said, "Building a shelter for your alpacas is a big waste of money". For Pete's sake they come from the Peruvian Andes mountains. The Peruvian farmers build a small rock corral to pen them up in at night. During the day they roam the mountain tops.

We did have one disappointment. Our old guy Paladin passed away about four weeks ago. He had been ill since last September but wasn't exhibiting any major symptoms. He had an increased respiration and had been losing weight but other than that nothing was abnormal. After we moved him to the farm he actually seemed to improve and put some weight back on. Then one day he started foaming at the mouth after he ate his grain. We called the vet and she came right out. Took some blood and a fecal and checked him over. She diagnosed his illness as a tick borne disease and prescribed some medication. And commended us for not waiting to call her. She said that the majority of her calls come after it's really to late to do anything for the animal. Paladin continued to improve and then one Saturday he seemed kind of off. He ate some grain and started foaming at the mouth again. We kept an eye on him and that evening he seemed better. Got up on Sunday and he had passed away very shortly before we found him.

We also had a little Joy added to our herd. Joy is Betsy's new cria (they are in the picture above). She was born last May and has been weened naturally. Some alpaca farmers insist on weening at six months but we believe Mother Nature will take care of things. We had an experience several years ago where a small cria weened at "the appropriate time" simply died of a broken heart. She would press her little face up against the paddock where her mom was and just stand there for hours wanting her Momma. Our cria's will always be weened the natural way. Momma's know best and will spit the cria off when they have had enough.

So this has run a little long but I had a lot of catching up to do. I'll continue the rest of this saga in my next blog.