I arrived at Alpacas at Windy Hill about 45 minutes later than planned, after getting lost in the backroads. The fact that I was late was probably better for Cindy, the ranch owner, as she expectantly had to make arrangements for someone to remove her beloved, favored Alpaca who was so sick last week. The alpaca miscarried Monday and died this morning just before I arrived. Cindy shared this news with me while we were sitting in a shady area adjacent to the first north field. As we started to plan the day's tasks, Cindy & I observed some odd behavior going on in the field. One non-pregnant female was seriously harassing a very pregnant, overdue female. We removed the bully from the herd by moving her to a small paddock close to the barn away from the others. The rest of the day, she gave us stony "why me?" stares whenever we passed by the smaller paddock where she was contained.
The Art of Corralling Alpacas
Cindy has over 300 head of alpacas on her ranch. There are several (9?) north pastures and an equal number (?) of south pastures with a dirt ranch road separating the north from the south pastures. Just west of the south pastures are a series of small holding pens used for a variety of reasons. Designing a series of easy-to-open/close gates is key to herding alpacas from larger fields into specific holding pens/paddocks. This series of gates is complicated to maneuver.
There were two distinct goals for the herding exercises. The first effort was to move five females sold earlier in the day to a holding pen where they could easily be prepped for a journey to the new owner's place. The second goal was to bring two females and two males to other separated paddocks to (hopefully) breed.
To get the five female alpacas, we went to the field where they were and opened the gate wide. Alpacas get VERY excited when they see an open gate and then run as fast as they can to leave the field. Most ran pell-mell down the road only to find themselves dead-ending in a smaller holding pen. We easily released the ones we didn't want back into the road and kept the desired five females in the small paddock/pen. We shepherded the rest of the herd back to their pasture, closing the gate behind them once all were in.
Mating Songs
We repeated these maneuvers, this time with two males, then with two females Cindy wanted to breed. We harnessed and led the males to smaller grass-filled pens. Then did the same with the females, pairing each with one of the males. The separated males were beyond excited when we brought each a female. Seeing alpacas breed was another very interesting learning experience! Alpacas mate in the “cush” (prone) position, meaning the female is on the ground with her legs tucked under her. If the female is receptive she allows the male to mount ("spoon") her and they mate while the male hums to her for the next 30 min or so. It's called orgling - the singsong humming-like sounds male Alpacas make when they are breeding. If the female is pregnant, she will not breed again and indicates this by refusing to sit and spitting at the male. There was a lot of humming and no spitting on Tuesday!
Felting Lessons
Before I arrived last week, I shared Rebecca Burgess' inspiration for writing "Fibershed" (a book I recently read) with Cindy, as it is what compelled me to reach out to Cindy in the first place. The seed of the book was the author's desire to make a year-round wardrobe using only organic, locally sourced & produced plant & animal fibers. In one section, the Bay-area author described an Alpaca wool felt fall/winter coat designed for her. Alpaca felt was chosen for the coat because it's waterproof and very warm. Cindy immediately exclaimed, "Let's make alpaca rain ponchos! I have a felting machine!" Hence, our first project was born!
In the last hour of our time together, we played around with the felting machine. Cindy had a 2' x 3' piece of felt we used to practice embellishments. We used a lighter shade of wool from a batt (a role of washed & combed wool) to lay decorative patterns on top of the original felt. We then moved the piece through the felting machine resulting in the patterns perfectly enmeshed in the original piece of felt. We agreed the next steps are to experiment with the durability of the felt (how many times do we need to put embellishments through the felter? Will the felt pieces shrink if put through the washer/dryer?). My homework is to research poncho patterns. I'm so curious about the end-to-end process and what we'll come up with!