Life on the Ranch can be full of surprises both good & bad!

Daily life on the ranch does not always go as planned. Today is Saturday and my husband will usually do the morning chores alone as I needed to head to town to open our store named the

I saw Gary heading back to our house with both of our two Maremma guard dogs trailing behind him.  He came into the house and yelled "I'm going to need your help, Pan has quills in his mouth."  I said "No, not again!"  Our dogs protect the Alpacas from those critters also. A couple of years ago, there was one that had gotten into the Alpaca girl's pen.  All 3 dogs had so many quills, that we ended up having to take them into the vet. The vet tranquillized them in order to get them out of the back of their mouths.  Again, this spring we had another very large porcupine hanging around the outside of the pastures which Pan & Meadow decided that they needed to take care of.  We were able to pull those quills out ourselves. Here is a picture of Pan this morning with some quills sticking out. Most of the quills are inside of his mouth stuck in his gums and the roof of his mouth.

Needless to say it was not an easy chore, as he does not like us pulling them out of him. He is a large dog (over 120 lbs) and he is hard for us to hold him still. We thought for sure that we would have to take him into the vet again, but after an hour of work, we were finally able to get them all out. Of course I was late getting into town to open the store, but it was worth it, knowing that our fearless Pan was okay. It is just another day on the ranch!

The Winner is...Drum Roll Please

Thanks for all of you that joined as followers of this blog. I had announced that anyone that joined as a follower during the month of October would be entered into a drawing.

My husband drew 3 names from this basket. 

And the 3 winners are...

COGGIE, COFFEEMOMMA, & VALERIE MUSSELMAN

Clap, Clap, Clap, WooHoo, Yea!!

Please contact me at this email lfagel@sundownalpacaranch.com
I need your personal information in order to ship out your prize.

I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll blow your shelter down!

  Wow, what a wind storm we had in N. Michigan on Tuesday & Wednesday.  I know it wasn't as bad here as other states where tornados had spawned from this huge storm, but needless to say, it was the worst wind storm that I can remember.  They clocked wind gusts Wednesday on the Mackinaw Bridge at 83 mph. We had lost electricity for a few hours. We are again very lucky as some of our neighbors are still without power as of this post today.
  Here are some pics of a portable shelter that my husband built this year.  He skids this around behind the tractor, to move it to different pastures. This way we can rotate pastures with the Alpacas and they can have some shelter from rain and/or sun.  He had attached it to the tree in hopes of keeping it from blowing away, during the storm.

As you can see from the pictures, technically it didn't blow away, it just blew down!

We also had lost a wall in our straw bale chicken coop. My husband had built this coop about 4 years ago. It has withstood blizzards during past winters. Here are some pictures of it after we tried putting it back together (during the storm).

 

Well, we do have some work to do this weekend.
But we are very happy that no animals or us were hurt during the storm.  We are very thankful for that.

Let's get weighed!

Well it has been over a week since I've posted. I have been very busy here on the ranch and running errands for our youngest daughter's wedding coming up this Saturday, Oct. 23rd. 

A week ago, we weighed our girls, trimmed their nails and did some worming shots.  It is all part of the maintenance of the herd.  Weighing them gives us an idea if they are maintaining healthy weights. Some of the mammas lose weight from nursing, so we like to make sure we keep them at a healthy weight. We also do a preventive worming in the fall.  We need to do the guys next (after the wedding of course).  I have posted a few pictures of the catch pen and Enya getting weighed. I can't take pictures while we are doing nails and shots. So you will just have to imagine that.  We use our catch pen to work on them. It was another beautiful sunny fall day.  

Catch Pen & Scale







Enya weighed



Chickens and more chickens, oh my!

We have about 60 to 70 chickens on the ranch. Why so many?  They help us with keeping the fly population down during the summer fly season.  They also eat the slugs in the pastures. The ranch is on the watershed to the Ocqueoc River. So when the pastures are wet, we can have slugs.  The slugs can carry a worm larve that if ingested by the Alpacas can cause neurological problems or even death in the Alpaca.  So having the chickens helps us with our worming protocol on the ranch.  The chickens are allowed to free range and the eggs taste wonderful. 

Visitors at the Ranch

Saturday, some ladies from the Spinning Guild Spinners Flock paid a visit to Sundown Alpaca Ranch. 

Gary, I and the Alpacas enjoyed having them visit us.

The following are pics of some of the Alpacas that they were able to visit with. If you have a school group or any other group that would like to come out and visit, please contact me and we can arrange a date.

Fame & Fortune



Yearling Girls



Lou Costello

A Beautiful Fall Morning on the Ranch

Here are some pics of the views from our ranch this morning. I took these while doing the chores.  Fall is so beautiful.  It really inspires me to work on my fiber arts.  Enjoy...

The girls

Some of the boys

Some other boys

The Girls