Adventures in Alpaca Breeding

As I've mentioned a few times, we are moving our birthing/breeding time to June/July.  So we have been breeding our two maidens over the last month.

Alpacamundo's Apple who is truly a maiden.  She is just under 2 years old and this is her first time breeding.

Alpacamundo's Daisy has been infamously not pregnant, twice.

During the ultra-sounds we had earlier this year, our vet did a cursory exam.  He said nothing appeared to be out of the ordinary for Daisy, so we just need to make sure we finish the protocol.  Then if she's still not pregnant, we can explore other reasons why.

We paired Apple with Enchanted Sky's Charlie Brown.  Charlie is still relatively new to breeding, but he knows what to do and takes his job very seriously.

I really must get a current photo of Charlie

• They got to breeding right away the first week.
• The second week, she resisted but he was persuasive, so they bred again.
• Last week she appeared to be very convinced that she is pregnant and mostly ran around the corral and refused to cush when he would catch her.
• Yesterday, she spit straight away and then busted out of the corral.

Aside from the busting out of the corral part, this is pretty much the text book protocol.

We also paired Daisy with Blue Mesa Yoda.  Yoda is still a little young, so he's not entirely sure what's going on.

• They got to breeding right away the first week.
• The second week, she resisted but he was persuasive, so they bred again.
• Last week she wrestled Yoda to the ground.
• Yesterday, Yoda was a bit nervous while walking over to the breeding corral.  But when I put him in the corral, he decided to get to work and she cushed right away so they bred for quite a while.

I had no idea what this meant.  I fully expected her to wrestle Yoda to the ground again.  After all was finished, she hung out by the gate looking longingly toward the boys' corrals.

Our vet came by today for other reasons so we discussed our recent breeding experiences...  He suggested that we spit test Daisy again this weekend, but don't let them breed if she's receptive.  Then spit test her a second time a week later and she should spit off.

Assuming that goes as planned, we will be asking him to come back for ultrasounds in a couple of weeks.

Nature has Other Plans

After my post yesterday, I had pretty much decided to breed Keyla and the younger girls in early September when the younger girls were ready.  I just wanted to do a little math first.

This morning however, I neglected to latch the boys' gate properly.

This isn't the match-up I had planned, since we have done this match-up before.  No worries though, Keyla and Bandit make nice babies.  Check out Eduardo and Apple.  :-)

So, assuming this breeding was successful, we should be expecting our first 2012 cria around the middle of July next year.

Alpacamundo: Decisions

With cria due soon, it's time to make decisions about next year's and future breedings.

Big Thompson's Birthday last year with Daisy, Kocoa and Frieda saying Hello.

The decision of who to breed with who is pretty simple this year.  We will be breeding with three first-time herdsires.  Two of these boys were given an opportunity last year, but didn't quite know what was going on.  Now being a year older, they were very interested when I brought our open female around last Saturday.

The real decision we have is when.

We like to have our girls bred and therefore birthing around the same time.  This allows the cria to have friends to grow up with and wean together with.  Since alpacas are very social animals, this really makes it easier on everyone.  Them and us.

Daisy and Frieda are due mid-August which means they'll be ready to re-breed in early-September.  Kocoa is due mid-October and therefore ready to re-breed in early November.  Keyla is open and ready to breed now.

I originally thought we would wait and breed everyone when Kocoa is ready so we would have four cria at about the same time next year.  However, I've also been considering breeding who we can in early September.

I like the idea of having cria in late-summer rather than fall.  Especially since October is getting close to snow flying.  That way if the breedings don't take, we don't have to wait until nicer weather.

Of course, we don't have to wait.  Alpacas are like cats and can breed pretty-much anytime.  So it's really more about what works better for the human-folk and the human-folk don't like the idea of breeding and birthing in a snow storm.

The marathon season begins to ramp up in the fall which means Hubba travels more in the fall which means early-September breeding generally works better for us.

So the big reason why this decision is taking some time is that we potentially have the London Paralympics next year.  But we won't know for sure until October, at the earliest.

So, if we breed in early September, we could potentially have cria right before we leave for London, but very likely we will have to make arrangements for our late-term moms.  Of course we always make arrangements for our farm when we're away, I'd just rather not burden our normal sitter with cria-watch and neo-natal tasks.

On the other hand, if we wait until November, we will continually be having cria during our high-travel season and possibly with snow on the ground.

Of course I'll let you know what we decide.  In the meantime, our first round of cria-watch is in progress.

Breeding Decisions

The time has finally come!  We are preparing to breed the first female alpaca born under the Alpacamundo Breeder ID.  She's actually been ready since February but I didn't want to have a cria in the middle of a snow storm next year.

I was planning to breed her in the spring, after shearing.  Then some of my friends had issues with still-born cria, so I decided to delay her breeding a little longer to ensure she wouldn't be too pregnant during shearing next year.

Our lead herdsire has been calling to her and she flirts with the boys whenever we bring them around.  My plan was to breed her with our lead herdsire, so I was happy they were interested in each other.

Then Wednesday, the girls got out.

The maiden (Daisy) went directly to the boys and started flirting, the pregnant girls went out to the pasture for some fresh grass and our 12 month old female (Frieda) went to the boys corral and cushed.

The boys (Charlie and Bandit) orgled, jumped on the fence and fought over who would have Frieda.  I told Frieda she's not old enough yet, and told Charlie they're related so it wasn't going to happen for him either.

The incident made me realize I hadn't thought about who I would breed Frieda to when the time comes.  And the time could very likely be this fall when we're breeding the other girls.

So I put together two matrices.

Ancestor Matrix:
Our herd across the top and their ancestors down the left.  I indicated what generation each ancestor was for each of our alpacas.  I already knew that some of our alpacas are related since they share a sire/dam or are full siblings.

Able to Breed Matrix:
Boys across the top and girls down the left.  I identified if the match was ok.  This is not a matrix to show who I plan to breed with who.  It is only to show whether they could be bred together based on ancestry.

I learned a few things by doing this.
1.  The planned Daisy - Bandit matchup would not work.  They are related 3 generations back.
2.  Daisy could be bred with one of our junior herdsires.
3.  Frieda has many options when the time comes.

The Junior Herdires:

Blue Mesa Yoda:  We bought this Legacy grandson with the express purpose of breeding to our Augusto granddaughter, Enchanted Sky's Kocoa Moon.   Both alpacas have amazing fleece.  Yoda is showing signs that he is ready.  We plan to make this match up in the fall after Kocoa has her cria.

Alpacamundo's Augustus:  Gus is three weeks older than Daisy.  He was the very first cria to be born under the Alpacamundo ID.  He has beautiful, fine and lustrus fleece.  He tried to breed a female when he was two weeks old while other breedings were going on.  Gus is part of the Augusto line and will be two years old in the fall.




The Decision:
I have decided to hold Daisy until the fall when we are breeding the other girls.  We could have four match ups and therefore, we should have four cria born close together next year, which would then be weaned about the same time too.  This way the crias will be able to have friends their own age rather than one born this time next summer and three others a few months later.

Rearranging Alpacas

We have had our alpaca herd on our own place for nearly 3 months.

We built the minimum amount of infrastructure possible to bring the herd up, so we have only 3 corrals and loafing sheds for 3 groups.

• The Ladies: dams + maidens + nursing cria
• The Big Boys: older breeding, near breeding and gelded  males
• The Little Boys: younger males

This made a whole lot of sense to me when we started.  There was only one problem.  We had three cria that needed to be weaned and one was female.

We decided the younger boys were young enough to not realize that Frieda was a girl.  So we put the three cria into the corral with the two younger boys until the moms dried out.

The next question was, "How long does it take for the mom to stop lactating?"  The answer is definately longer than 2 weeks.

Last week, this weaning attempt had reached 6 weeks.  I realized that Frieda was now 9 months old and that Yoda was 2 1/2 years.  She is technically too young to breed, but not outside potential.  He is old enough and has showed some interest in our maiden, so I know he's getting close.

Since Hubba was at the Los Angeles Marathon, my mom came over and helped me catch and hold Frieda's mom so we could make sure she was dry before moving Frieda.

Fortunately Kocoa was dry and Frieda had a little halter training experience. 

She wasn't too excited about the halter at first, but agreed to come along.  Augustus (19 months) mounted her as we were leaving the corral.  He didn't know what to do at that point, but it was clear that he knew she was a girl.

My mom told Frieda, "That's why we're moving you today."

She seemed to understand and walked very easily to the Ladies' corral.