Today we have gone to the field with scissors, needles and syringes, a bottle of a sc vaccine, and a sharp eye for anything unusual with the alpacas.
When we need, we give our animals medicines. A vaccine in this case. Nevertheless, as my mum says, “en casa del herrero, cuchillo de palo”. Therefore, we very rarely used medicines in the farm. Last time we vaccinated against skin parasites was a few years ago. We also do faecal egg counts, and so far haven’t needed worming in the last three years either. We can be very proud of our animals’ health.
So we went to the field to see the crias and apply a critical eye on them. We shyly opened the fleeces, to not to spoil the treasure, and took a fibre sample from each. Smooth process.
First one was Kestle Pearl of May. Her fleece, I do not think is the finest of the group, however it is the denser, longer staple, and has a beautiful crimp. Pearl is all pure white. Pink feet, pink skin and eyelids, white all throughout the fleece. With Aruni as a dam and Havengore as sire, Pearl has really strong gene pool. Aruni was imported from Chile, and even though she is aproaching 20 years old, she is very fit and strong. Havengore has been National Champion and holds numerous first positions in different shows. And their mixture looks like this:
Above, sample at nine months old.
Second one was Kestle Helium. He was born just after and much smaller than big girl Pearl. So the boys named him Helium as he was much lighter.
His mum is Ameera. She is my favourite white fleece in the breeder group. In the lab, she does not present the highest score stats, however she feels the softest to the touch (that is the translation to the “best handle” of all my fleeces). Ameera is still young, I think she’s six this year. She has given us three fawn boys so far. In spite of her colour, she does not produce white. I hope this year she will give us a girl. She is mum to Aramis, Jorge and Helium. The three pictures below show how similar the three boys are.
However, I think the best fleece of the three is Helium’s. It still needs to prove denser than Aramis’, which is difficult, and remain same fine. Helium’s sire is Corinthian. Even though Corinthian is not the one with the best results in shows, he seems to produce crias with good fleeces. Helium has improved over his dam in fineness and style. Even though it spins like a dream, Ameera’s fleece has a very shy crimp. So far Helium’s fleece is very promising, however we will not be showing him this year. At the end of last summer, he fell unwell. We sill don’t know what happened to him. One day his baby fleece didn’t look healthy any more, he presented the typical low neck posture, his mum stopped feeding him and his fleece started to look clotted. We had to intervene and bottle fed him from three months old to enhance his weight, soon the signs of skin reflected the issue and we applied baths too. It took some effort. After a month he was fit again, however his first fleece is a bit spoilt. We cut off the ends to avoid rot. The trim revealed his true colour, which I think is awesome. He is a caramel shade of fawn, a kind of ginger to it that reminds of his grandma’s reddish brown, Arwen. As a spinner, I would choose his colour over his brothers’. Helium’s fleece is very fine, which requires skilful hands, more time and patience on preparation. The finish yarn will be lush. I think I will very much enjoy working his fleece.
(Continue in Part 2)
Kestle Alpacas 