Getting in a final lick or two

Yours truly is just back from what was hopefully my final drive-by breeding to Maine, at least for the month of August! The company at TGF was of course wonderful as always though making that trek on a weekly basis could get to be a bit much. We needed to do what we needed to do though. With Elite Legend due to hop a transport sometime next week for a year back in Idaho at his birth farm, we must now keep our fingers crossed that at least some of these last gasp breedings we’ve done actually become pregnancies and crias. We do, amongst others animals, have the heart of our white/light yearlings (Panamera & Awesome Blossom) bred and confirmed with EL pregnancies, though we also know all to well that nothing is guaranteed. We must simply hope we have enough buns in the oven to hedge our bets properly! See you in 2012 big guy (not to be confused with THE Big Guy who lives in Hancock, NY at Hilltop…have I confused you?).

As it stands we are otherwise in a bit of a breeding lull at the moment here in our own herd with only a few dams coming due for their initial breed backs at day 21. The fact is that the majority of the maidens that we had gone into 2011 intending to breed are already pregnant meaning the boys down the hill at the Stud Barn are a lot less busy for the time being. For the females we know are already pregnant, it’s really just a matter of keeping track of things through ultrasound combined with a little behavior testing on the side. I must confess though that my wife’s skill as an US tech has made the former far less pressing. With her ability to pick up 14 and even 13 day pregnancies (or not as the case may be) we are often reaching the same conclusions — pregnant and acting like a complete git towards the males vs. open and batting her eye lashes — about our recently bred females almost simultaneously. It’s frankly enough to make an alpaca pimp downright lazy.

Most of the recent reproductive activity here has centered around a mix of visiting females: some maidens that we sold back here for their initial breedings, others girls owned by some of our partners here to breed with the co owned Herdsire in question, and another group are just true actual outside breedings. There are a goodly bunch of them that have been in residence for several months now though even they (knocking on wood as I type) are succeeding in getting pregnant in spite of what passes for “technique” from some of our rookie Herdsires. With a bit of luck there may even be a mass exodus of sorts from the Main Barn for points south come some time in September. Time will tell.