A nice trifecta

As you may have gathered from posts over the last month or so, the birth ratio of males to females around here this spring and summer has been rather slanted towards the testosterone. It happens. In fact the whole reason the Arena here is the size it is (140′ x 200′ when you include the sheds), is because in the two years prior to its construction and our expansion into to a herd of roughly 150 animals, we had had 70% male births. Our thinking was that while crias are all very cute when they’re little and still nursing on mom, around the time 40+ males hit the equivalent of alpaca puberty — somewhere in that 14 to 18 month range — they can be, shall we say…challenging from a management standpoint. So the whole purpose of the Arena was to enable us to ride out a big male year, housing the entire female herd there if necessary, leaving the two lower barns to be temporary frat houses during the cold months of the year. I digress though.

While 2011 has felt a bit like a replay of 2001-2002 where the male/female ratio has been concerned, when we have had females born this year some of them have been quite exciting. Not least among those have been the little ones born to what are known in-house as the Jesusa girl’s: the two daughters of legendary import PPeruvian Jesusa, Magdalena and Chalice, as well as her granddaughter, Johanna. While Magdalena and Johanna had both had Elite Legend girls of their own in August (one white, one beige), we had been waiting on Chalice to have her cria up until yesterday when she too joined the female hit parade by having what is almost assuredly her best cria ever. Sometimes we just know, ok? That the newest member of the family is likewise a white EL female is obviously a bonus. Chalice has been on our sales list — admittedly priced rather high —  for months now precisely because this was what we thought she was capable of after two unsuccessful attempts at line breeding her to her grandsire. This little girl though is at the very least raising some eyebrows based upon the early returns. Time will of course tell as it always does.

Though I was at the Arena a couple of hours ago with my camera (we breed some, we photograph some, we play Angry Birds some), Chalice and her baby were still in their bonding pen at that time and mom was in no mood for me and my new digital toy. Unlike her sister and niece, Chalice is quite physically protective of her babies. Enough so that yesterday the postpartum participation on the part of the midwives, Jen and Kim, was really limited to clearing off membranes, dipping the little girl’s umbilicus and then getting the heck out of there before mom freaked out. All is forgiven though: keep making them like that and she can be as nasty as she wants to be!