In anticipation of spring, Cindy, owner of Alpacas at Windy Hill, wanted to rearrange occupants in several of the fields by female status, particularly in order of expected due dates for the pregnant females, then by those who will be bred soon, and those who won't be, and other criteria I can only faintly recall. Simple, right? Hah! First, she had to figure out who was pregnant & what the due dates were. Then she had to figure out who was currently in which field. Thankfully she had created a chart listing all alpacas due between early May through Next October. Now we (she) had to figure out who was where. Here's who she wants moved to specific fields:
Females due May thru early June
Females due Mid-June thru July
Females due late July thru August
Females due late August thru September
Females due late September thru October
Females she'll soon breed (who may or may not be still nursing)
Females pregnant, but still nursing
Weaned babies
Other criteria I can't recall
That's more than an eight-field shuffle with 20 or more in each field! The exercise involved having alpacas trot from each big field (one field at a time) into four-five smaller pens where we went through several sorting iterations (hence, the shuffle) moving select alpacas from one small pen to another. When each smaller pen held alpacas with the right criteria to trot to a new designated field, that's what we did. We then repeated that for each field. Though we didn't get completely done with the trot-&-shuffle exercise by the end of the day, I (& maybe even Cindy) felt like I was practicing to be a whirling dervish!
TB Tests for the Hawaii Five
Thankfully we had a break when mobile veterinarian Dr. Nenn (NennVet.com) stopped by to give the five Hawaii-bound alpacas a TB test. A negative TB test is required to transport them to Hawaii. Dr. Nenn has a large mammal vet practice (e.g., horses, cows, alpacas, other herding animals), which requires a mobile vet office/emergency facility built into the back bed of her truck! I heard through the grapevine her firefighter husband crafted it for her, which I forgot to confirm with her. Hopefully I'll get a chance to find out more in a future encounter.
More Vet Sci
Dr. Nenn & her assistant listened intently as Cindy shared her experiences of using a salve combined with water-based CBT to treat alpacas' skin issues with great results. Even the young male she treated last week (& I showed in last week's Alpaca Adventures) was almost completely clear!