Emptying out the desk drawer…

1. Now that we’re back home for the foreseeable future, the boys (Sam and Max) and I took 4 of our Herdsires up to the Arena late this morning to commence the season’s breeding shenanigans in earnest. Max was along for the ride more out of boredom honestly — both headed to camp soon for a reason — but Sambo will again be acting as my right hand man throughout most of the summer. If only he could drive, then I could really take advantage of him!

We did facilitate a few breedings before we left on our trip a couple of weeks ago (and even have some confirmed pregnancies to show for it) but now the alpaca boys will begin heading up to the Arena almost daily in waves for the next 16 weeks at least. Charge (but try not get spat at)! While Invictus was a complete and utter natural in his first time “out” this morning, behaving as though he was born to do this, his little brother Tenacious was not quite living up to his name just yet. He’s still suffering from what we call the Ferdinand effect (why breed when there’s hay and grain?). Tomorrow Tenny will head back up though, this time with his uncle Ringo as his mentor and we will try to breed them side by side. Just you wait youngster: your handler still has a dirty trick or two up his sleeve.

2. We’ve been using Cameron a fair bit so far this season and I have to say that the guy remains a force of nature. His definition of what would be an appropriate alpaca to mount doesn’t really suffer from too much detail. If it has 4 legs and a pulse it passes Cam’s litmus test. Of course I was grateful to have the big lug along for the ride today when the rookies needed a little help “explaining” to the ladies what exactly it was they had in mind. He ended up taking down two girls for the rooks and in between did a breeding of his own. Like Charlie Daniels says in that great Geico ad, “that’s how you do it son!”

3. It’s 90 degrees here today but thankfully there’s a wonderful breeze as well so that even those members of the herd that could be inside in the shade are for the most part outside grazing.  Even while sitting here at my desk (cowering in the AC it must be said, I’m not nearly as tolerant of the heat as our critters are) I have a view of our group of beautiful young juvenile females who are currently grazing off the south side of the Main Barn. If that doesn’t inspire me to fight through any writer’s block then there really is no hope.

4. Our thoughts go out to all of the folks out west dealing with the threat and danger of wildfire. I can’t imagine what it would feel like to lose everything like that compounded, in the case of livestock folk, with the stress of trying to evacuate farm animals on short notice. Please stay safe…

5. Lastly, there are any number of updates that I’ll be doing to our web site in general and to our sales listings in particular in the coming days. Amongst other things, several of the females on our sales list have had their crias over the past few weeks so that they, at the very least, will be getting updated and in some cases see some changes in their pricing as well. Stay tuned for that. Hope every one stays cool (enough) wherever you may be, it looks like this heat is definitely going to get worse before it gets better!

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