Alpacas!!

Sunday, April 25, 2010
Temecula, California

I saw a special on tv one Saturday morning about an alpaca farm in Temecula, California. I fell in love with them cause I thought they were so adorable! I quickly google mapped Temecula and discovered that it's only about an hour north of San Diego! So at 9:00 this morning we packed up the family and headed off the the Alpaca Hacienda, just in time for the spit-off!*

When we first arrived, the alpacas were very shy and timid, but once they found out that we could feed them treats, they quickly warmed up to us.

Aren't they adorable?? Sorry for the long post but I couldn't decide which pictures to leave out of this one!!

Preview

This is Beth Osbourne, one of the owners of the hacienda. She's really nice and says that they have about 75 alpacas on their ranch!

We tried to get Randy to kiss one, we also wanted to see if he was gonna get spit on...he chickened out last minute. Come find out, Beth said that this was her "blue ribbon spitter!" He spits on everybody!! hahahahaaa! oops! He lucked out on that one!
This is Maggie, one of the friendly dogs on the ranch

*spit off:

CONFIRMING PREGNANCY IN ALPACAS
There are a number of ways to confirm a pregnancy: 1. The best external sign of pregnancy is the female rejecting the male. This is usually demonstrated as the female “spits off” the male. 2. Progesterone assays are, at best, only an indication of ovulation and pregnancy. 3. By ultrasound. It is very important to have a program of periodic testing to determine that the female is retaining her pregnancy. You can use anyone of the tests above. I would check 2 times in the first 60 days and every 60 days thereafter. “SPIT OFF” When a female is presented to a male 7 days after breeding and she “spits off” you can be fairly certain that she has ovulated and is probably pregnant, but you need to keep testing her, at 14 and 28 days, until an ultrasound can be performed. When a previously serviced female is presented to a male 14 days after the initial mating and she rejects the male it is likely that she is pregnant. “Body language” (ears back, kicking, avoidance of male and in some cases actually spitting), indicates what is known as “spit off”, but to be safe a pregnancy should be confirmed by ultrasound 30 days after conception and at regular 60 day intervals throughout the pregnancy. Oh yah, one more thing, Sandy and Jacob actually did get spit on, and it was nasty! They stank for the rest of the day. Hilarious!