Alpaca Eye Problems and an update on Meadow our LGD

For those of you worried about our dog Meadow, she is doing well, as her wounds have all healed nicely. We did hear a couple of coyotes yipping at dusk last night and the dogs all responded with loud barks to let them know that they are here to protect us and the Alpacas.  Our neighbors have been hunting coyotes and I heard gunshots this morning from the general direction that we heard the coyotes last night. I'll have to check with them to see if they shot any. In the meantime I am going to blog about my Alpaca's eye problem.

One of our studs named Woody has been having an eye issue ever since we started haying them this past fall. The Alpacas like to bury their head in the hay to get to the finer bit & pieces on the bottom (hay chaf).  Here is a picture of Lou doing just that this morning.

Lou eating the hay chaf

They will push all of the hay out of the feeder and onto the ground.  Woody will still bury his head even when it is on the ground.

Woody trying to get to the small stuff.

Because of this, Woody has an eye that has been really irritated.  He might have an allergy to something in the hay, but it only effects the one eye. 

Woody's eye with hay stuck to it.

This is his outer eyelid as Alpacas have two eyelids. Every morning we "clean" it out.  Now that it is below freezing temps all of the time, his eyelid is usually frozen.  Gary holds him, while I take a warm wet compress to unfreeze his eyelid, and then I wipe out the "puss" and clean it up. I flush his eye with Saline water, then we put an antibiotic cream into the corner of his eye.  Some of the other Alpacas get a little white in the corner of their eyes, but nothing like Woody's eye as seen in this picture.

Woody's eye

After cleaning it up he goes right back to eating with his head buried in the hay.  Somedays his eye is clear and other days, it is like this.  I can't wait to have green grass and pastures again. No more eye problems!

Meadow, our Maremma guard dog is injured!

Well, we have started out the year here on the ranch with a dog who looks like she was in a fight with another dog, coyote or (?)  We went out this morning to do chores and Meadow was in the hay building laying on an old sleeping bag that she had made into her bed on top of some bales of hay. She will usually come out to greet us when we walk up the road to the Alpaca pens, but today she didn't.  I went to the building after petting the other two dogs, Pan and Furio who greeted us. There she was looking up at me with dried blood around her left eye and some blood along her muzzle and wagging her tail, happy to see me.


Meadow's injuries



I went over to her to see what had happened. At first I thought maybe she had gotten tangled in some old barb wire fencing that we have here on the property (we try to pick it up whenever we find it), but no, that wasn't it. It looked like something had tried biting her. There wasn't any puncture wounds, but something had broken the skin.  My husband and I checked out the other two maremmas to see if they had been injured or looked like they had gotten into a fight with her. Furio the aggressive maremma that we own, will defend anything that he thinks belongs to him. He will usually share with Meadow his littermate. There was a dead mouse laying in front of him, but no other sign of a dog fight with neither Pan or Furio. The next thing  my husband and I did was walk around the pasture fences to see if we could find any signs of a fight, such as blood or some sort of animal tracks. We found nothing.  The only conclusion that we came up with, is that this happened down by the river or in the woods.

We brought Meadow back to the house to clean up her wounds and treat them with some antibiotic cream. She has been lying in the house today eating up all of the attention (and of course special treats) that she is getting from us.  We will keep an eye out for whatever it might have been. Hopefully "it" looks worse than her. We are sure that Meadow was doing her job, protecting us, the Alpacas, goats and chickens from whatever the "threat" was. Maremmas are known for defending their livestock to their death. They are an awesome breed.

Meadow's injuries after being cleaned up. 

Gary & I wish everyone a very Happy New Year.

A Winter's Sunset

Our ranch name Sundown Alpaca Ranch, LLC was named by us because of the view from the Alpaca pens and pastures. We get to see spectacular sunsets year round while doing our evening chores. Here is one from yesterday that my husband took a picture with his phone, as I didn't have my digital camera with me.

We are very fortunate to be surrounded by mother nature's beauty.

MERRY CHRISTMAS

Gary and I wish everyone a very Merry Christmas.



Furio playing Santa Claus.



Yummy - It's Grain Time

I have been so busy getting ready for the holidays, that I haven't posted on the blog. I have been knitting last minute gifts, shopping, getting out last minute Xmas cards and attending Xmas parties.  While we are so busy with the holidays, we still have the Alpacas to take care of.  In the winter time we hay them, but we also give them (year round) a special grain formulated for the Alpacas. It provides them with the minerals and vitamins that they require.  If you have happy, healthy alpacas, they will produce a very nice fiber blanket. Yes, stress in the Alpacas can cause the fiber to "break" and the fiber to be shorter and coarser.  So we like to keep our Alpacas healthy.  Below are pictures of Gary graining the girls. You will notice in the pictures that they play follow the leader, especially in the snow.  They don't like to walk in the deep snow, so they follow the trail that has been broken in the snow by us.

The Girls greeting us at the gate



Fame loves to be first!

They follow Gary to the feeders.



Gary putting grain in the feeders.



Our male cria eating his grain.


We grain the girls, crias and yearlings twice a day.  The males we only grain once a day.  They all love their grain. After all it is Alpaca candy!

It's a Blizzard Outside

Well, I hate to sound like a weather person giving a weather report everytime I write for the blog, but living this lifestyle is also about dealing with mother nature.  We are in the midst of a blizzard today and it is supposed to last until Monday morning.  We had to plow our way to the animals this morning to do the chores.

We have about 8 inches of new snow on the ground now, with more to come according to the weather report.  The alpacas were all in the shelters this am, except for Cyrano & Gizmo, as they were outside eating under the tree where we also put hay for the guys.

Here is Lou (the bad boy) who is still in time out. His temporary shelter is our horse trailer that we use for the alpacas.

And here is a picture of the girls with a few rumps full of snow.

And  the guys, waiting for us to bring them their hay.

As you can see the alpacas take the storm in stride. They stay nice and warm with their fiber. We provide them with shelter, food and water.  Life is good for the Alpacas.

Brrrr...It's cold outside, but the chores go on...

Well, it is snowing and 27 degrees outside, while the wind blows from the NW at 16 - 20 mph.  It's time to wear layers of clothes to keep warm, while doing the daily chores.  Today we finished moving animals around for the the winter weather. We have to heat all of the animal's water tanks to keep them from freezing, so we always do some moving of the alpacas, dogs and now goats.  We also have a very bad Alpaca named Lou. He has become aggressive with all of the other "boys", so we had to put him in time out. (his own pen temporarily).  The picture below is my husband Gary scooping Lou's "alpaca beans" into the tractor bucket.

We compost all of the alpaca beans, hay/straw and our household compost. So that means once a week I drive the tractor out to the compost piles and dump the bucket.

Yes that is me, all layered up in winter clothes to keep warm on the tractor. I'm wearing my "extreme alpaca ski mask" that I made from one of my cria's fleece to keep my face from freezing while riding the tractor. It is so soft and keeps me nice and warm.

And here is one of the compost piles that I just dumped the contents of the tractor bucket .  My husband works all of this into our garden in the spring time.

And here are some of the girls today, all toasty and comfortable. This is their type of weather and they love it. That is why they have all of that nice fiber to stay warm. I now know just how warm their fleece keeps them. I sometimes break out in a sweat wearing the ski mask that I made, while doing chores in the cold wind.