Exhaustion Redux

Newborn Thisbe

Before I had alpacas, I thought I knew tired. I thought I knew fatigue and even exhaustion. Tired was a long day at work followed by the tedium of making dinner , then a couple of hours of recuperation before you went to bed. Fatigue was a whole week of long days or maybe a weekend hike. Exhaustion was a long day followed by a late night on a deadline-driven multi week project that had me working weekends while still trying to get all my regular household errands done – groceries, housecleaning, paying the bills.

Now I know that I didn’t know squat about exhaustion.

Until it was a matter of life or death, I don’t think I knew how elastic the limits of exhaustion could be. And that comes to what I have been occupied with the past few days. Thursday morning, my dam, Aria, who was 3 1/2 weeks past due, was having contractions when I opened the barn at 6 a.m. It was an unusually painful, wracking labor that kept her kushed or on her side, making moaning sounds when it was at its worst. I called the vet in fears that the baby might be mispositioned. At 9:30 a.m., the vet arrived and discovered the head under one leg, making delivery impossible. The position was corrected and we waited. Still nothing, with Aria continuing to evidence great pain during contractions. Although the feet were out and the nose poised to eject, the vulva was simply not expanding wide enough to allow passage of the head. We guessed the baby was large. By this time, the water had broken and delivery had to occur. With me pulling on the legs , the vet pulled the opening wide enough to extract the head.  After that, the baby- a white girl stained profusely with blood from the umbilical cord- came out easily. It was now 11:15 a.m.

As any alpaca breeder knows, this is just the beginning after an extraction like that.  The baby was exhausted and weak, and still had not stood up by mid afternoon. One ounce of goats milk was bottle fed to her at 2:30 p.m. to keep her going until she stood up and nursed. Aria was also milked for 10 cc of colostrum.  Still no activity from the baby. A temperature reading then showed her temp to be a low 94 degrees. She was hypothermic. After applying a blow dryer for a good half hour, her temperature rose to 98.6 and she started to show some alertness. Aria, on the other hand, was still in pain and received Banamine directly after delivery and then the start of a course of antibiotics. However, she had still not passed her placenta by 4 p.m.  Both mom and cria now demanded attention. For Aria, a start of Oxytocin shots every 2 hours to encourage uterine contractions. For the baby, another ounce of goats milk at 4:30 p.m and an attempt to get her nursing by propping her up under mom. She also received an enema with no results. At 5:30 p.m, another attempt and the baby had her first solid nurse. It was hoped that this would also stimulate contractions in Aria to eject the placenta. Aria had started to expel the amniotic fluid in the placenta but not the sac itself. The baby was still not active so another enema was given. Still no results. At this point, the vet recommended oxtyocin shots for Aria through the night and supplementing the cria every 4 hours with goats milk. This can be hard news to hear after a stressful day and at this point, you just accept it and do it. 8 p.m, 10 p.m, 12 a.m. , 2:30 a.m, 4:30 a.m., 7 a.m. – the routine was repeated. Get up, prepare a shot of oxytocin, inject Aria, get the baby on her feet, position her to nurse. Every other time, heat up some goats milk and give to the baby.

By 8 a.m. the next day, Aria still had not passed her placenta but the baby had gained over half a pound.  I think it was in the moment I saw the cria’s weight that I thought “it was worth it”. My second thought? I’m not feeling that bad – I’m still functioning ok! Which was great, because I had to haul the mom and baby to the vet’s to have the placenta extracted and an IgG taken on the cria. But despite what could have been, the best possible outcome for a retained placenta was what happened. The vet extracted it manually and it seemed in one piece with both horns. A quick lavage with saline, a syringeful of genomicin, and Aria was declared good to go. And the baby’s IgG came back at 1500 mg!

The cria was still noticeably inactive and I had not seen her pass meconium or even urinate so that evening I gave her a 3rd enema. This time , a large piece of hard fecal matter was ejected and she was immediately active and more alert, acting like a normal healthy cria. I did still get up once during the night Friday to get the baby up and nursing but I think now, she is good to go. I’ll be watching closely for the next few days before I stop monitoring. But for tonight, I am looking forward to catching up on some sleep, though I still plan to get up once to check in on the little one.

I can only marvel at those breeders who have to raise orphaned crias. That’s a test of stamina that I hope never to have to pass. My small two days and nights of anxiety were more than enough to push me to an excessive amount of Excedrin and chocolate.

And as with all challenging experiences, I like to think about the lessons learned from the entire event:

1. Have more than one vet but choose one as the primary

2. Never underestimate the power of a good enema

3. Never question that you can do what needs to be done, just do it

4. Have a kit supplied for the worst possible scenario and hope for the best

5. Have your trailer hooked up and ready to go at the first sign of something wrong

6. Have a support group of breeders

7. Take care of yourself so you can take care of your animals

So now I feel we are pretty much out of the woods. I don’t name a cria until I’m sure. But I’ve gone ahead and given this one her name – an appropriate one. That’s for another post.

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Alpacas Are Not a Pyramid

I was at a neighbor’s party and one of their guests heard I had alpacas. He sauntered up and, with a superior air, said, “Alpacas? That’s a pyramid scheme.”

Besides his incredible rudeness in the home of a mutual friend, I found his ignorance and hypocrisy rather offensive. You see, I had talked with his wife previously and she had said they had considered owning alpacas but decided to put the money into their home instead. Not a mention that they deemed it an unsustainable business model. Huh.

So let’s clear this up right now: Alpaca Breeding is not a pyramid scheme. It is also not a MLM ( multi-level marketing).

So what is a pyramid scheme?  According to the Federal Trade Commission:

“They promise consumers or investors large profits based primarily on recruiting others to join their program, not based on profits from any real investment or real sale of goods to the public. Some schemes may purport to sell a product, but they often simply use the product to hide their pyramid structure. There are two tell-tale signs that a product is simply being used to disguise a pyramid scheme: inventory loading and a lack of retail sales. Inventory loading occurs when a company’s incentive program forces recruits to buy more products than they could ever sell, often at inflated prices. If this occurs throughout the company’s distribution system, the people at the top of the pyramid reap substantial profits, even though little or no product moves to market. The people at the bottom make excessive payments for inventory that simply accumulates in their basements. A lack of retail sales is also a red flag that a pyramid exists. Many pyramid schemes will claim that their product is selling like hot cakes. However, on closer examination, the sales occur only between people inside the pyramid structure or to new recruits joining the structure, not to consumers out in the general public.”

And regarding an MLM:

“Multilevel marketing programs are known as MLM’s, and unlike pyramid or Ponzi schemes, MLM’s have a real product to sell. More importantly, MLM’s actually sell their product to members of the general public, without requiring these consumers to pay anything extra or to join the MLM system. MLM’s may pay commissions to a long string of distributors, but these commission are paid for real retail sales, not for new recruits.”

So let’s take a look at the alpaca business model:

1. Alpaca breeders have something to sell: alpacas, alpaca fiber, fiber products, and services

2. Alpaca breeders do not get a payment for introducing (“recruiting”) new breeders

3. Alpaca breeders to not get  “cut” of any sales that new breeders make

4. Alpaca breeders sell not just to new breeders, but also existing breeders and the general public

It always infuriates me when people rush to label derogatorily when they don’t understand something.  And let’s face it, a lot of people don’t understand why alpacas are worth anything. Yet they don’t question when someone will buy a pureblood horse for $12,000,a rare breed of dog for $1000 or more, or a piece of art for $100,000. I can quantify the practical value of an alpaca much more easily than any of those due to its premium fiber qualities. And like all of the above-mentioned, the market sets the value of an alpaca. In other words, the value of an alpaca at any point in time is what someone is willing to pay for it, regardless of how the seller may price it.

You may or may not be pleased to know that I didn’t respond to the ignorant comment by the other party guest. Although I could feel a dozen blistering retorts hovering on the tip of my tongue, I didn’t want to take the bait and start an argument at what was supposed to be a congenial mingling. I politely suggested that he would find he was wrong if he researched it and walked away. Perhaps this was a disservice to the alpaca community, as it could be viewed as an opportunity to educate and generate awareness. But some people  cannot be convinced and knowing the background he and his wife had in looking into alpacas, I think this stance probably makes him feel better about choosing a renovated house instead of an alpaca business. And the alpaca industry is probably the better off for their decision.

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Is Breeding Like Baking?

It’s a day for baking. The temperature has dropped twenty degrees from yesterday and the overcast skies seem to support the forecast for rain. I’m on cria watch still and trapped here pretty much all day. It’s also our fourteenth wedding anniversary. Put all that together and that says CAKE to me.

I love to bake. ‘Carb’ is not a four letter word in this house. Butter, sugar, nuts, and chocolate are my four favorite food groups. Today calls for an old favorite, nothing too fancy – I’m making an old-fashioned glazed pound cake. This may seem decidedly unfestive for a special occasion, but there is nothing better than a well-balanced pound cake and it’s trickier than you’d think, especially with the challenges of living at 7,000 ft in altitude.  Pound cakes can often collapse here with their high ratio of butter and sugar to structure-building ingredients of flour and eggs. I’m aiming for a nicely domed and crusty pound cake baked in a bundt form, with a tender but not heavy crumb and just a hint of lemony goodness infused through grated rind and juice.  I also like to seal the whole cake in a glaze brushed on when warm and this one will be based on lemon juice as well. In my mind, I can see it perfectly.

And that’s when it strikes me. Breeding that perfect alpaca cria is a lot like baking.

Okay, hold on and stop the laughing. It’s true. I almost get the same buzz when I’m combining males and females as I do when I tweak a recipe to make it come out the way I want. And the process is similar: Think about the result you want, choose the ingredients, combine, bake, wait, look at the results when done, make changes as needed.  Decorate when ready – in a few hours for a cake, in six to seven months for a cria. Voila! – analogy complete.

The cake is in the oven now. I’ll leave it in there for at least an hour before opening the door to take a peek. It’s hard not to cheat and poke one finger in to gently probe at the top. That could be catastrophic here where structural strength in a leavened cake can be terribly fragile. Meanwhile, my expectant dam is out at the barn. I run up to check on her and there’s no change. I can see that baby moving and the evidence of its activity in the quick rise and fall of her belly.  It would be a very nice anniversary gift if that baby would arrive today – the beautiful fawn girl I’ve pictured in my head for eleven months now. I can’t wait to meet her though am prepared for other outcomes. As long as it arrives healthy and is standing and nursing in good time, I’ll be happy (though that fawn girl would make me even happier). I’m pretty sure the pound cake will be out and glazed before the baby but I have a new vision in my head – of carrying out a piece of freshly baked pound cake to nibble on while I watch the baby stumble around with its first steps.

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Social Networking for Alpaca Breeders

 I’m of two minds about the pervasive growth of social networking. Does that sound strange coming from someone who blogs, has a couple of websites, and is a member of several social networking sites? Maybe.

Social networking started out as a way to find old friends and make new ones. But with interest groups now possible, it has business value too, especially for geographically-dispersed alpaca breeders.  Now given that lots of people already have websites and advertise on marketing sites like Alpacanation, you may ask what additional value social networking sites may have.

The single value proposition of social networking is, in my humble opinion, to build relationships. It’s not to find another place to insert alpaca sales listings or thinly veiled ads for that herdsire you’re so proud of. I am always turned off when I find a blatant ad couched as forum discussion or a comment.  But real life stories, experience, and sharing really bring depth to the person behind the farm name that you can’t get from flat website content. As I’ve said often enough, the alpaca biz is a relationship industry, not a transactional one. That’s my theory about why so many online auction sites come and go with little interest.  People want to buy from people they feel they can trust. Social networking can help you build that trust or at least open the door.

I enjoy blogging but do not participate in forums. Having said that, a lot of people are extremely successful in reaching a large audience through active forum posting. They can establish themselves as a subject matter expert, an enthusiast, a political commentator, or the voice of reason through the consistency in their responses.  It’s just my personal choice to abstain from these. I’m more than a tad conflict-averse and writing a blog already takes me out of my naturally introverted comfort zone. Besides, I see some people who must be on their computer or mobile device all the time for the frequency of their responses.  Remember I said I was of two minds? Here is the flip side.

To me, social networking is a tool, not a lifestyle.  Don’t you just want to groan when you see a group of people furiously texting away while walking, oblivious to their surroundings? Or when your eating with friends, and one of them can’t seem to stop responding to the latest tweet?  I am still resisting Twitter. Unless your house is on fire, do I really need to know what you’re doing and thinking right now, this instant? Email me instead, please, or I’ll read it on Facebook.

The other hesitation I have about social networking is particular to alpaca breeders. In general, people are not drawn to the alpaca business because they have high tech, plugged in, multi tasking personalities.  I know a lot of breeders who have yet to get broadband and don’t know what a blog is. We’re all fleeing the stimuli-saturated modern world.  Alpacas give us a connection to something real and infinite: birth, growth, nurturing, reproduction, death. And usually, we live in places that reflect that all around us in the pastures, the seasons, the wildlife. So many alpaca breeders are really not the social networking types. I see that personally from my blog. I’ve gotten lots of feedback on my posts, but not through comments that are left – I get emails and comments when I see people at events.  Why don’t people want to leave it on my blog site? I suspect because it’s unfamiliar and also public, and we are still mostly a generation that is not used to letting it all hang out in cyberspace. However, I expect that will change in the next generation of alpaca breeders, whose first toys were not a rubber ball, but a keyboard attached to a PC.

Where can you go if you want to social network? Besides the commonly known forums on Alpacanation.com and Alpacasite, there are alpaca breeders present at all of the below and a ton of others as well.

Myspace.com

 

Facebook.com

linkedin.com

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Survivor: Alpaca Edition

May is a busy month- besides the final spring shows, ending with Nationals end of May/early June, there is shearing in our part of the country and this year, something new.

For consecutive weekends in May, there have been three different open houses/marketing events south of Denver alone. All of them for the first time. All of them held by several small breeders working together. And breeders are working together in new ways. They are offering package discounts together, a choice of herdsires across all participants regardless of which dam you purchase, in addition to the usual free seminars. Some of this cross-breeder cooperation is specific to the event itself, but some breeders are working together to make these permanent options. The message is: “if you buy from one of us, you buy from all of us with all the benefits”.

I really admire creative ideas and when breeders take the initiative to drive their businesses forward…especially when someone comes up with something that makes me think, “Darn, why didn’t I think of that?”  It’s especially brave to entangle your sales with another’s, but these are tough times and it calls for extra effort.  It really reminds me of Survivor in some ways and I mean that without any derogatory tone at all. After all, the winner of Survivor achieves that distinction through careful choices and one of those choices is the nature of their alliances – who, what, and when.

Nobody gets into the alpaca business to be part of a co op or a complicated set of business relationships that require a team of attorneys. It’s reality that moves us into partnerships and co-sales. We do , however, join the community of alpaca breeders gladly and cherish the friends we make. The alpaca business, more than many other industries, is intensely relationship driven. These are not transactional sales, after all. So alliances in this industry are less about contractual obligations than where your trust lies.

So what do I think about this trend? I think it’s inevitable and promising. Especially if these efforts extend into joint efforts for hay buying, marketing, and fiber products.  For all that breeders have clamored for action from the national association (AOBA), it seems that change in this industry has always been driven from the bottom up, from a consensus of effort from multiple small breeders.

I’m not sure where I fit in this. I recognize that I have a tendency to the quiet and in an increasingly competitive market, it pays to be louder.  Will I drag myself, stumbling and protesting, out of my comfort zone or stick to what I’d prefer it to be and let it stand or fall on those tenets? No answer to that yet. Luckily, unlike Survivor, there can be more than one winner.

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Hold on that Herdsire Purchase!

I just purchased my first herdsire. Unbelievable as it may sound, I have been breeding alpacas for five years without ever owning a breeding male.  Of those five years, I have spent almost two actively looking for a herdsire.

Many new breeders make the purchase of a breeding male one of their top priorities.  From a cash flow perspective, this makes a lot of sense – you not only save yourself the cost of outside breedings but you also can generate immediate revenue through the sale of stud services. But I’d like to make an argument for the opposite: holding on the purchase of your first herdsire.

When I first started out, it was clear that farms were often known by their herdsire. In other words, a really good male had branded their farm and their breeding program. As one well-known breeder told me, “People come to buy females but it’s the quality of the males that attract their attention.” So from that day on, I knew that a herdsire purchase would be the most important buying decision I could ever make.

With the implications of making a poor decision in this area, as a new breeder I then decided I needed to gain more knowledge before I knew what I wanted in a male and also before I felt I could adequately assess animals. So I spent a lot of time consciously recognizing what I liked and what I didn’t like. What colors? What look? Did I like a particular fiber style? What would I prioritize – size? capacity? bite? fineness of fiber? density? Where was I willing to compromise and where was I not? Some of these have changed in importance to me over time but others have not. Without knowing what I was breeding for though, it didn’t seem that I was in a position to purchase a male that would shape my breeding program in the direction I wanted.

A third reason why I decided to hold off was for a business reason.  Besides feeling the stud would have the breeding value I wanted, I also needed a male that had a lot of market value. That means the right bloodlines that would attract outside breedings, the right heritage, and (although I hesitate to say it) the right show record.  Now I have always derided the people who breed purely on show wins because I refute the misconception that show wins translate directly to breeding value.  Ribbons are important for marketing value, but I’ve seen plenty of champions and blue ribbon winners who I would never breed a dam to. Their qualities do not align with my breeding goals.  Having said that, I do look at show wins and I do show – this is a crucial part of the business to add marketing value. Got that? Breeding vs. marketing value are not always the same thing.

The last reason I held off purchasing a herdsire when I started out was purely practical. Every female I bought came with one or two breedings and I only purchased from people who had herdsires that I knew I wanted to use. So I really didn’t have to pay for any breedings for the first few years. And every time I bought an animal, I always asked for an additional breeding and often got it. Even today, I have a tidy little stockpile of high-value free breedings tucked away for when I need them.

I think I also had a vague niggling idea in my head that I would just breed a beautiful stud myself and therefore save myself the cost. Naive, huh?  Especially with my micro-sized herd. That homegrown showstopper will come someday -in fact,  I think now that I finally have purchased a herdsire, he might just pop up this year.  Alpaca breeding seems to work that way, with a strange sense of humor saturated in irony.

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How I Learned to Knit

The most avid knitters I know came to it early.

“I learned to knit from my grandmother when I was three.”

“My mother taught me when I was very little.”

I have vague memories of my mother teaching me to knit but I never attained anything more complicated than a knit one, purl one rib. My mother, on the other hand, knitted, crocheted, and sewed – our sofa and beds often had a handmade afghan on them. I, as a persnickety child, disdained these handmade items. Because they did not come wrapped in plastic from the store, I was blinded to the craftsmanship embedded in each design and the effort and care in each stitch.

That changed in my junior year in college, when I spent a year in Germany as an exchange student.  Upon arrival, I spent the summer at the Goethe Institut in Goettingen. I was taking a German immersion course to rapidly increase my German language skills in preparation for my Fall semester at the Universitaet Mannheim. All the Goethe Institut students received housing scattered among the local university students.  The dorms were a hodgepodge of nationalities and I quickly found my own multinational circle of friends. Among them was a full time student from Lebanon, Haleh, who was completing university in Goettingen along with her older sister and younger brother. Their parents had sent them out of the country to protect them from the escalating conflict of the mid 1980’s.  Haleh, remembering the pain of being transplanted to a foreign country, quickly took me under her wing and became my main tutor for the German language and adapting to German life. We could only speak German together and that forced me to accelerate my speaking skills.

What I noticed quickly all around me, however, was that everyone knitted. It seemed all the college girls were wearing colorful Icelandic sweaters they had knit themselves. And no crappy acrylic either. Everything was natural wool or some other natural fiber. I started noticing girls and women knitting on buses, subways, and on trains. It seemed that knitting needles were poking out of each backpack and tote I saw. Nights around the TV (where there were only three stations with 15 minute commercial breaks) seemed to require that each female present whip out their current knitting project. And it didn’t matter if they were German, French, Scandinavian, or Lebanese, like Haleh. It wasn’t long before I asked Haleh to teach me to knit.  And of course, she agreed.  She started me straight on circular needles ( for portability, she said since women took their knitting projects everywhere) and that’s a habit I have carried through to this day. My first project?  A red turtleneck sweater in wool I picked up at the local department store, where a rich variety of yarns could be found every day.

My sweater was knit in basic stockinette with drop shoulders. Square body, basic sleeves, sewn together like material (no mattress stitch) and with a  “knit one, purl one” rib for the sleeve cuffs and neck.  I was immensely proud of it. Just finishing it gave me a sense of accomplishment that seems hard to attain in something so simple nowadays. It came down to a realization so basic and satisfying.

With just a single strand of yarn and two needles, I could make things I could wear.

At the time, it seemed rather miraculous.  Before long, I was picking up monthly issues of Stricken (knitting in German), Nicole, and Brigitte – all magazines chock full of knitting patterns.

My second project was a multi-colored Norwegian sweater made out of an alpaca blend wool I found and fell in love with at a local store. Perhaps a foreshadowing of things to come? At that time, I had no idea what an alpaca was but I knew I loved the plush handle of the yarn. That sweater was gorgeous, but turned out way too large for me. I had yet to master the patience of doing a good test swatch for gauge.  Years later, I gave it as a gift to a much taller friend, Renee, who loved it and actually borrowed it to wear when we toured Vienna together. The important thing, after all, was that it be worn.

When I returned to the States, I lived for quite a while off those last few German knitting magazines I had brought home with me. Reading knitting patterns, as any knitter knows, is akin to learning a new language with the myriad abbreviations and terms. I had learned in German and in metric and the effort of relearning everything in English just seemed to cumbersome. For a long while, I didn’t pick up a needle at all.

When I started breeding alpacas, I rediscovered my love of knitting and finally dug up my old circular needles. Alpacas have motivated me to learn how to knit in English (though I still think of needle sizes in metric), to puzzle my way through a whole new set of acronyms, and expand my skills beyond what I learned in Germany.  Sweaters are still my favorite item to knit though I have a rising fondness for socks.  When I knit (which is almost always in alpaca nowadays), I often think about that first alpaca sweater I did over twenty years ago. I’ll have to ask Renee if she still has it and if she still loves it. I often think of Haleh with regret, as someone with whom I lost touch long ago through nothing but lack of effort. I wonder what she is doing, whether she and her sister and brother ever returned home, if she knows how much her support and help meant to me when I was that lost American student, freshly landed in a country with an inadequate vocabulary but boundless determination. I would point her to my website which shows the sweaters I have made just recently, but all have their roots in that first red turtleneck.

And I still marvel at the simple premise of a knit garment that can manifest itself in so many beautiful and varied ways.

One strand of yarn.

Two needles.

Endless possibilities.

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The Five Phases of Cria Watch

I am on cria watch. The expectant dam is a first time mom named Aria. I purchased Aria when she was just three months old. Now, over two years later, she is finally due with her first baby. Although the years have flown by, they feel now in memory like an eternity. During cria watch, time stretches out to agonizing slowness.

I think each time I go through this for first timers, especially for the highly anticipated births, there is a set emotional pattern that occurs that takes me from emotional highs to tragic lows. I always think about Elisabeth Kubler-Ross’s Five Phases of Grieving because the end phase is the same though applied to the opposite extremes of the life cycle. Here we are talking about awaiting a new life versus mourning the end of one.

You have to view the span of emotions with some humor.  To me, cria watch is the ultimate lesson that teaches us how our wills are nothing in the face of one lazy, fat cow of a dam. When it comes, it comes.

1. Anticipation

The due date is arriving. In my mind, I envision the cria in reality just as I’ve imagined it for the past eleven months. Longer even, because that image first formed in my mind when I decided on the breeding. I’ve had almost a year to refine the details and sharpen the picture, even think of names. I call the baby by name when I see it move, just to see how it feels.  I scan the mom for any sign of discomfort. Are you humming? Did the baby turn? I try to see if she is bagging with milk. This goes on for days. I clear my calendar so I can be at home until late afternoon every day.

2. Bargaining

The due date has come and past. The dam still shows no signs of discomfort. I can see the baby moving but then it settles again. She is chewing her cud like she doesn’t have a care in the world.  I tell her that when she has the baby, I’ll let her out into pasture again, where lusciously tender blades await her. She’ll get as much alfalfa as she wants to fuel her milk production. I start to contemplate the possibility that the baby may not be as I wished – if it’s a boy vs a girl. If it’s white vs. a fawn. Considering that, I start to juggle what the other expectant dams should have to compensate. As if I can rebalance the scales before they’ve even been tipped.

3. Denial

She is over a week due. I can’t believe it.  Was the breeding date accurate? Am I sure she is pregnant? If she isn’t, she has a large tumor attached to her belly and is grossly obese.  My mind flies back to if I remembered a time when she was uncomfortable from the baby turning. How long ago was that? The baby should be here.

4. Anger

I am way tired of being trapped in this house every morning and running up there every hour or so only to have my hopes dashed.  She is bagged but still no baby. I don’t believe it! Why won’t she just pop the dang thing out? I want to just yank it out or pop out from behind hay feeders to scare her into labor. Drop the baby, drop the baby! I scream at her.  My patience is at an end and I’m raging. Raging over the loss of something that I have yet to have.

5. Acceptance

It’s now two weeks past the due date. I am worn out from ranting.  I mosey up to the barn every couple of hours without expectation. I’ll be ready when it comes. I’ll try to be here. I hope only that the baby will be healthy and the delivery easy.  Maybe I’ll run some errands while I have a few free hours. What are the odds the baby will arrive while I am gone? I’ll be back in time, no big deal.

When it comes, it comes.

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How $5 Equals $15,000 in the Alpaca Business

When I was a teenager, I had an allowance of $5 a week. We weren’t allowed to work part time jobs because my parents wanted to be sure we were focused on our schoolwork.  That $5 covered buying gum, candy, ice cream, and going out weekends with friends. That $5 paid for independence and freedom of choice. I would call that a good deal.

In college, I spent a year abroad in Germany on a scholarship. I received my scholarship money of $120 once a month – it seemed like a lot of money, more than enough to meet all my needs for four weeks. But in my first month on my own, I was down to just about the equivalent of $6 in DM with one week to go and wondering how I would eat the last half of the week. Luckily, I was able to get an advance on my next month but it was a shocking reality check.

Once I graduated, I moved into my first ever apartment. The rent was $291/month. The first time I wrote a check for it, I had to include a security deposit so the total was $582. $582! My hand shook when I wrote that first check. It seemed an impossible amount.  I budgeted myself to $40/week in discretionary spending money.  What I had done with $5 a week now cost eight times that amount.

After I got married, my husband and I bought our first house. Suddenly, our single expenditures were all over three digits. It seemed that nothing cost under $100 anymore. As time passed and we moved to houses we liked better and finally to property, those expenditures expanded to 4 digits just to take care of renovations and property maintenance. My monthly credit card charges expanded to almost equal that of the mortgage.

Life seemed to get more expensive as it got more complicated – or was it the other way around?

Nothing, however, makes me think more about that $5 allowance than the transactions that are part of being an alpaca breeder. Even as we bemoan the drop in alpaca prices with the economy, we must realize we are still talking about thousands of dollars. At an auction, these amounts are spent at the drop of a hat or to be more accurate, the raising of one little finger detected under the laser vision of an auctioneer spotter.  Is it crazy for me to think it would be a huge coup to purchase an animal I want at a mere $15,000 this week and then feel crippled the following week by having to pay $3,000 for a new well pump? How did water I need today become less worthy of my hard-earned dollars than an animal that only has a promise of return tomorrow? Why do I grumble over my increased grocery bills but gladly fork over top dollar for beautiful second cutting orchard hay? At what point did the needs of my alpacas supersede my own?

Even though it was thirty odd years ago, I still remember the feeling of receiving that crisp new $5 bill every week. Each bill represented a week of endless possibilities. My puny $5 to be spent purely on things I wanted, free of mandate. Perhaps that’s the unquantifiable value in the transactions that are routine in the alpaca business. We want an animal, we want to provide them with the best, we want to produce the best animals out there, we want to dabble in creation and succeed, we want to declare ourselves as entrepreneurs and subject to no one. I have to have a water pump, I have to buy groceries. Mandated, not desired.

When does $5 equal $15,000? When it gives me the same feeling as buying my own candy bars did years past, with that first toothsome bite of freedom and empowerment. And though I may long for the simplicity of long ago, as an adult I realize the challenges have to come with greater risk and cost to reap the rewards that will yield the same satisfaction as that measly bar of chocolate. After some consideration – it’s still a good deal.

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The Fall of the Waitron

It’s GWAS (Great Western Alpaca Show) weekend here in Denver. I’ve just arrived home after an exhausting weekend. My feet ache and my legs feel like they’re locked in a standing position for eternity after just three days. All my clothes are saturated with the odiferous scent of paddock-condition alpacas.

In my last class as I realized the end was near (yay!), I was standing on deck and gazing around absentmindedly when it struck me. Where once there used to be a sea of white-shirts and black pants uniformly worn by each handler, I now saw a myriad of colors and garment types. Jeans, alpaca gear, leather, and eclectic vests and jackets surrounded me. It’s the death of the waitron look and I can only rejoice.

When I first became an alpaca breeder and embarked on becoming part of the show circuit, it seemed that breeders had a bit more trepidation about deviating from the recommended (not mandatory) dress code.  Perhaps we were all afraid that the slightest distraction might disrupt the judge’s gaze as it fixed upon our alpacas and incur a penalty in our placement. Now, however, it seems that what the older established breeders have long realized has now taken root among even the most anxious of competitors –  the knowledge that the judges have little mental bandwidth to consciously note the handlers, not to speak of what they are wearing. So unless it is flapping, waving, clicking, or rustling, the chances you will disturb the judges with your clothes are pretty remote.

This show I now consciously recognized that some people even are perhaps a bit superstitious about their choices. There are some breeders who always wear the same vest, hat,  or jacket. Maybe it makes them feel lucky , or just more confident. Maybe it’s a look that they feel is branding. It works because whenever I envision them, I think of them in that outfit.

I’d like to think that this trend is because we as an industry have become more confident in our animals.  An implied message of  “the quality of my animal shall speak for me, so think what you want of me”.  That, of course, would be reading too much into it.  Perhaps it’s simply the triumph of common sense over caution or maybe comfort over homogeneity.  Regardless of the reason, I’m looking through my closet right now.

There’s not a single white blouse in it.

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