Learning Alpaca

Sunday, December 03, 2006

Some random photos!!

Well, I never said this would be a hugely active blog - but I will be trying for a regular Monday update.
Let's start with a few random alpaca photos.


At the Alpaca Expo in Christchurch. My first show!!!


Our new alpaca - a cute little girl. Now we have to decide on a name.
Alpaca names can be interesting things - will you name at random, name it based on what the alpaca looks like or reminds you of? Some farms will name all the alpacas born in a particular year starting with a particular letter so you can tell what generation/year an alpaca is from and many smaller farms go with a theme (or two). My partner (Kerrie) and I are naming our 'pacas using Japanese names - so our first baby was Taiko, our second was Niko ( literally "two child or second child" :-), and so on.


This is my beautiful partner Kerrie..ummm, the one on the left :-) and Chiquita, the second alpaca we bought and her baby Yukiko ( "snow child" because she is as white as). The colour genetics of alpacas is very complex so you never know what you are going to get - and that's half the fun.


My nephew Joshua came to see the alpacas and they wanted to see him as well. Alpacas are fascinated by small children and will quickly come to meet and greet them. Joshua was great - he made slow, gentle movements which don't startle the alpacas.


Kerrie teaches International Students English, and brought some to see alpacas for the first time in their lives. Taiko was great with them and they had a great time meeting them and taking them for walks.


That's it for the moment. Please forward this blog's address to anyone you think might be interested and I'll try to post more very soon. This Thursday we are doing some shearing so that is going to be a fun hands-on day. I'm going to do a post on sorting the fleece - the questions that you should ask yourself and the sort of things you should be doing.
Have a great week!!