FarmLife: Thoughts On Animals, Stewardship, & Farm Culture
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| A real llama conference |
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| Missing her herd, SP's walk was a true mini today. |
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| Good with the golf cart. But then, the see them every day. |
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| She sees her friends and isn't happy. |
Saturday promises to be another scorching day for the girls, hot at 93 degrees and humid. Add T-Storms to the mix. Not wonderful. This time, I'm ready. Michael and Harold worked their magic, finding 2 great solutions. They cleaned a mini-hillside pasture alongside the chute to the upper and lower pastures--this was Mickey's idea. This area is large enough for the 6 girls, but is more ideal at 3. 
After proofing the area, we opened the gate and Tess was the first one in. Cierra was last in and first out. As she ages, Cierra takes the safe, secure route; always the leader but loner, she remains in the barn at night. Remarkably, she is still, at 14, the alpha female. One of benefits of life on this mountain is the breeze; almost always there is one. So in this sheltered area, there is usually natural AC that can keep the girls cool while outdoors. Today will be the test case, and if pressed to guess, I think they'll pick the second innovation.
We added 2 AC window units, and in our trial run, within 35 minutes the temperature dropped 6 degrees. But that was on a cooler day, toward evening, as Michael duly noted. Problem is the barn is big, so how can we best deliver the AC to the girls. Here's the solution, and I think it's way cool. I'll let you know later how it worked.
o be on the safe side, 1 of the 2 right side bungee cords gets reattached to the stall door.
The final ingredient is turning on the AC units. Mickey says the large fan will pull the AC into the stalls. It seemed to yesterday when we did a trial run. Weather, when bad, can make a season endless. This year, summer has been an endless trial for all of us who have livestock. I think the guys have created a great solution.
Maria, without an h. Peeking through the vinyl door. If you are a breeder of llamas, you take many factors into consideration when selecting an animal to add to your herd. Just makes sense to get fiber, temperament, size, blood lines, guardian and performance types in your breeding plan. When I entered the llama world, I had no thought of breeding, but Carol guided me in choosing as if I were. Now that I am more interested in growing my herd, I have most of what you would want to balance a breeding program. So, how did I select Maria, and why. The video answers that question, beyond a shadow...A Talking Llama from RJ Stangherlin on Vimeo.
Nothing can replace a cria that Miss Cierra is not going to birth; learning llamas includes disappointment. I really wanted her blood line but she is 14 so I think it prudent to retire her and find that line elsewhere. Balancing that sorrow are the two new girls in my herd, and while they are not newly born, they are newly separated from their mothers, and you can tell. Maria and SP are spending their first full day on the farm, and amazingly, they have really settled in. But not surprisingly, they are homesick, missing mothers, missing a large herd where they knew everyone, missing Carol and Buck Hollow Llamas.
and Maria already comes to me. After feeding, I took her for a walk to the pond area where I thought she might graze, but she was much too interested in her surroundings. SP is shyer but by late this afternoon, she was nuzzling me face-to-face. Tomorrow should bring a walk with her. Such graceful beautiful creatures. Wonderful fiber too, but the personalities are what sold me, enough that I switched from Bodacious, a stunning-looking llama, to SP at Carol's open barn. Just loved the the manageability and people-pleasing nature of SP. Of all my herd, the girls would only know and possibly recognize Et Cetera, and so it is no surprise that they bonded to her. What did surprise me is Et Cetera's response; she is mothering them, staying with them, forming a sub-herd of 3. When Tess, Rev, and Miss Cierra went to pasture again late morning, Et Cetera stayed behind with the new girls, mentoring, guiding, and teaching them.
I agonized for months over how they would settle in, if they would be accepted, and would there be enough room for all of them to have fan access. Guess I shouldn't have lost sleep over this one. The two young 'uns stay together, and consider the first stall they entered as theirs. That's where they head, and Et Cetera is right there with them, their stand-in mother. She kushes down with them, calls them to follow her, and they travel together in a small pack.
We are so rain deprived, I followed Carol's advice and brought hay to the pasture. The girls dug in at the beginning, but then went back to browsing the sparse orchard grass. If only we could have several days of gentle rain to green the fields.
It's an old saying, most often used to represent a significant overcharge, that notion of being taken. My friend (and colleague and almost daughter ~ if you read any of my blogs you know her already) Jennifer Brinson and I had a good laugh, and reinvented the definition.
Here's the scenario. Brinson comes to The Farm to help me use iMovie to render a retirement party for Beth Barber. I am that annoying-to-some shutterbug who snaps everything (with pre-approval, of course). Before we began the tech lesson, we walked to the barn to check on Miss Cierra. I told Jen how much pampering and special treatment she's been receiving, making her the No. 1 Spoiled Rotten Llama in the herd. On nights when a fan was definitely not needed, when the pastures had a cooling gentle summer breeze, when the orchard grass was trimmed and waiting--I let Cierra stay in the barn with a fan. And she has been the recipient of just a wee bit of a handful of grain--very little, Carol--just to keep our relationship growing.
Then, almost as if on command, Albert arrives. He is a breeder--of championship beagles--and we ask him if he thinks Cierra is pregnant. When it comes to rendering risky pronouncements, before he knows which way the wind is blowing, Albert is an icon of political correctness, aka hedging bets. Indirectly, he doesn't think so. Has something to do with the rear end and how they carry. Brinson and her family bred one litter of Golden Retrievers, so she thinks maybe/not? I'm clueless, but at this point, here it comes.
Image via Wikipedia
What is so timely about Woodward's post is its timing in my life. An owner of three wonderful girls, one of them, I hope, is successfully bred. Time will tell, but with that time will certainly come a more somber approach to the gestation period. I am excited, yes, but will come to the process with an awareness I might not have had before.... Yes, I'll have a great digital scale, and yes I will weigh my girls, and do daily diligence. And I'll pray for some more good fortune, that my veteran llama mamma, Ciera, will deliver yet another healthy cria.![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=0b55d84a-965f-4461-a75b-5ab197e6b204)
You could not have asked for a better weekend for an Open Barn; April 25-26, 2009's weather was as good as it gets. 
In fact, everything about the Carol and Doug Reigh's annual event at Buck Hollow Llamas was picture perfect. The llamas looked wonderful, the farm itself is bucolically beautiful, and the vendors with whom we spent the afternoon were the most wonderful people who taught Mickey and me about the craft of shearing, cleaning, carding, spinning, and weaving llama fiber. I left with my head spinning with all the things I could do--and how to do it--with the fiber from my girls.
The original homestead was home base for Carol's wares; fiber, rugs, llama toys, llama puzzles, "Deliberately Mismatched Socks Made in Vermont" (very eco-chic recycled T-shirts repurposed), free popcorn and beverages, and lunch for volunteers and vendors. Solid construction of a century created natural air-conditioning in a charming environment.
The upper part of the barn was home for the vendors, and that's where Mickey and I provided the meet and greet at the registration table. Actually, my husband did the lion's share of the greetings, improving on Carol's registration form for next year, while I wandered and shopped (okay, I did help, but the llamas were such a pull and I was shopping...).
In my meanderings, I got to talk to the guests and learn about grooming (very different from horses). The farm is a beautiful place, serene despite the activity of the day's events, which included videos, haltering demonstrations, a tour of the farm, llama walks, cart driving, and vendor demonstrations. Everything about the day was low-keyed and lovely, a de-stressor and great day in the country, as you can see in the videos below. Some of the images were too big for Animoto, so I am working on where I can put them. 
For now, I cannot resist including some of the best photos I have ever seen of my husband. The llama is pretty cute too.![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=d71e7841-ed01-4436-bb2a-2e489ee8a049)
Is it just that the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence (no grass on either side but does that matter) or that llamas are inherently curious creatures. Or are they capable of attachment and want to be with you, wherever you go. If you are an owner longer than I, you might have the answer. I choose to believe that one of the llamas who owns me would like to be at my side, given the choice. 
The second is food-driven, a girl who loves playing in the pasture, cavorting. The third is independent, a guard llama and great aunt to the core. It's in her gene pool.
I am slowly learning llama language, the posturing of bodies, stances, and sounds that communicate among them who is alpha from beta or beyond. If there is anything I adore about being a llama mamma, it is sharing the sense of caprice that seems to run in the breed, the way they cavort and telegraph a sense of fun, the joy of daily living, encapsulated in these graceful, agile (well, most of the time) creatures.![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=3f0c8519-a4ad-4feb-b85a-825d89c78803)
Friday the 13th was a lucky day indeed; the girls were reunited with their first Mother, Carol Reigh, who bred and raised my girls. 
If ever a logo truly symbolized a business, Carol's logo does, and you can see its representation in this photo and the Animoto video in this post. 
Carol came to the farm to teach me how to use the chute I purchased from her to use to groom the girls and trim their toenails. Learning llamas is a learning curve in itself: how to halter, lift their feet to support their weight, where to place your foot in the chute to provide that much-needed support, how to massage their feet, how to enter and exit a chute, how to turn a llama to the left, right, or to move one back in a straight line. Nothing makes a learning curve straighten better or faster than learning from the best, and that's what I have in my breeder, who continues to mentor me and our girls as we become a new family.![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=8128bdec-6bfb-4bcd-8d71-d1a23c3506a9)
While I do not believe that life should be lived age-or-gender specific (I have always worked against the norm), a time comes when balance, judgment, and timing cannot be the sole responsibility of a great packer, a horse that babysits the rider over 4' fences and wide oxers. When my last great equine babysitter died, I felt a void beyond description, and subsequently had several opportunities to be gifted with great bloodlines that did not succeed on the track. That inner voice that speaks to me heeded my husband's concerns that I should seek a different venture.
Several hours later, we had fallen irretrievably in love with Tess. She stole our hearts, and as we left Carol Reigh's farm that day, I knew that a piece of my heart was left behind. Two weeks later, my husband bought Tess Allenby for me. After all, she wasn't a horse, I couldn't ride her, and ergo I would have a safe occupant in the beckoning barn. Everyone knows that llamas are herd creatures, so the search for the companion llama began, and late summer we purchased 
Rev, who was Tess's best friend since they grew up together.
God must have been watching and guiding us on our llama adventure, for we were truly blessed to find Carol Reigh and her llamas. Although we had a barn, we needed to decide actually to use it (versus building a new one, a decision that we belabored perhaps too long, but then, my husband makes all the decisions and he really is always right, so I defer to his judgment). Then came fencing, which kind and contractor (we followed Carol's recommendation and love the final product), and which pastures we should use to work from the barn. We added a roof extension for the girls to kush down under, and by Thanksgiving, the girls were ready to arrive. From April to November, Carol tended to our girls, taking care of them, teaching me when I visited them, helping me with design and layout and a host of decisions. She even shopped for me, outfitting the girls in style. 
I arrived home from school the day before Thanksgiving, and Carol and the girls were waiting, with a loaner llama who would winter with the girls as their aunt. Well, suffice it to say that for Christmas, my husband bought Miss Cierra, who has taught the girls well and been the greatest aunt of all, and a great guard llama with The Canadian bloodline as part of her gene pool. When Carol said that she would always provide service after the sale, she was true to her word. I have often called or emailed her with questions, and she has always been kind, caring, and generous with her time and knowledge. She is truly, like her llamas, one of a kind.![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=e2f455fb-553f-4f54-87f1-a71b5afaf7c9)
