Beautiful Silence

While working in the Arena the other day, I had an auditory epiphany of sorts. Though we had been going for days (and some times weeks…when it wasn’t 90 degrees) at a time with all of the hanging fans up there turned off as the days and nights had turned cooler, there was a greater organic silence I couldn’t quite but my finger on until it hit me: all of our resident barn swallows had taken their families and migrated south! The low din that 100+ nesting song birds normally make from April through sometime in September, was suddenly gone and replaced by…nothing. Though I don’t begrudge the swallows even one tiny bit (they are probably nature’s best mosquito predators we have in these parts), I have to say that that silence was lovely. Anyone that’s ever spent time with their alpacas either in a pasture while they graze, or just sitting in an otherwise quiet barn while the animals loaf about doing their thing, knows how magical that can be. To be in a building that holds 150+ animals, with the only audible sound being the occasional low hum between moms and their new crias, still blows be away, even after almost 17 years of doing this. In someways you would think that we would be immune to such seemingly trivial things after all of the roads that we’ve traveled down during that time. While there is of course an accumulation of emotional scar tissue we have to show for our efforts over the years, it’s always nice to remember some times what it was that made us fall in love with these animals and this life in the first place. Sometimes something as simple as a contemplative and communal moment with the herd can do that.

The next 10 days are going to be busy ones for some of our co owned Herdsires. Elixir, Sub-Zero, Kahuna, and Archangel are all scheduled to head back to their respective co-owners’ farms on or around the 1st of October. It’s been a busy summer for all of them but it is now officially last call here at CCNF for 2013. Elixir, who arrived here in July still behaving like a slightly timid teenage boy at his first school dance (not that I would know anything about that), is now loping about the pastures and breeding females with confidence and panache. Unfortunately for our young rookie Herdsire, he was also briefly slowed by a nasty abscess on his back — we’re quite certain that one of his barn-mates gave him a welcoming bite when he was first introduced to the melee of the Stud Barn — which not only dampened his libido for a while but is also keeping him, at least temporarily, from returning to the show circuit. To say that we are looking forward to seeing what Elixir’s first crias look like next spring and summer would be a vast understatement. In his absence, there is talk of actually trying to breed his kid brother, Defiance (likewise a son of Elite Legend), for the first time even though he is a little bit smaller than his “big” bro and is still a full 2+ months shy of his 2nd birthday. Big D was seen orgling and jumping some of his pen-mates when we were doing a breeding nearby him the other day though, so there is an above average chance that he’ll be pushed into action. You can of course expect documentary pictures if and when it happens! *

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*My mother pointed out the other day that I seem to be constantly putting “alpaca sex” (her words) pictures up on Facebook and Twitter. Not sure which was worse: having it pointed out that from June through November that I’m little more that some sort of agricultural pimp, or that it was my mom doing so? 😉