EDR Lamas’ Weblog

We have one more baby due — overdue, I think. And of course it is an alpaca and of course it is her first and of course I have no one else in the herd due so I can’t tell if this is just the way it is going to be this year.

I did something last year that I don’t think I will do again: I field bred my alpacas. I only have four females and one breeding male, and I watched very closely and wrote on the calendar when I saw someone being bred. Only one of the three ended up being bred, which could have been caused by the field breeding or by the fact that the male was 13 years old at the time. I don’t think his age is a problem, though, and he did take each of them down several times. The issue I am having is that I know this female was bred the first time out — at least he was sure doing his thing. And I’ve been around the block enough times to know first-time breedings, no matter how wonderful they look, don’t always take. I’m just feeling very insecure and am tired of waiting around for her to do something. It will probably be a light fawn, which I do not want, but the male is red/brown and the female is white, so I think that is what I will end up with.

On the subject of waiting for babies, one other thing that is really bothering me right now [maybe because I'm sitting around waiting for this blasted baby to drop -- watch, it will not only be light fawn but a boy] is that people in both of the state organizations I belong to, IAOBA and ILLA, are taking life too seriously. Hey, folks, things happen — spit and shit both, you know. None of us is perfect and by-and-large we are volunteering to to what we do. We do have lives outside the organizations. If you want to take something that seriously — not trusting people, being negative, acting like a toddler whose candy was just taken away — spend some time in a cancer ward. Check out the kids UNDER TWO YEARS OLD who are bald because they’ve been getting chemo. Get a real life and let the rest of us enjoy our animals. If having llamas and/or alpacas is the your total livelihood, then spend your energy doing that, not sending e-mails and talking to people and generally causing problems because something ‘wasn’t done right’ according to your rules. Even if it wasn’t ‘right’ according to the procedures, I doubt it will cause the world to end, or even the llama and/or alpaca industry to cease and desist.

Okay, one more rant and I’m done for the night. This is the problem when I’m tired and also tired of w-a-i-t-i-n-g [and yes, I've done this lots of time before and gotten just as frustrated]: I say what I want. The best part is that the ways things are going, no one else is going to know! So HA!! At any rate, I am fed up with people who buy animals and don’t know anything about them and then abuse or  neglect them. I’ve been involved with two llama rescues in the past month, and both were totally ridiculous. One involved a male cria [baby] who was taken away from a perfectly healthy mom and sold to a lady who had the sense to check around [after the cria quit eating] so that it ended up at my ranch with an adopted mom and seems to be doing well. The lady who bought the cria is somewhat to blame for not doing some research before buying the little guy, which she acknowledges, but the real problem is the person who sold him with the advice that the lady could bottle feed him like a goat.  Berserk male, anyone? The other one was a neglect situation — an intact male kept in with a stallion and a mare and none of them fed properly until last January. Needless to say, it was originally a disaster. However, in January, a wonderful lady [who again didn't know anything about llamas] started feeding all the animals at the place [horses, ponies, birds, pigs, and the llama]  and fell in love with the llama. We helped her move it to a much better facility after she had to buy it from the person. Last I heard it is doing well, but what a rotten situation. I asked about calling Animal  Control, but apparently in that area AC only deals with dogs and cats — makes me really appreciate David, the previous Animal Control person in my county.  And that isn’t anything near what the true rescue people see, from what I’ve been told. It is so sick, sick, sick. I would take along to a rescue some of the people who have nothing better to do than complain about how things are done in the ILLA and IAOBA, but I probably wouldn’t be doing the rescue “correctly,” and I would haul off and hit the person when he/she starts in on me. I do not hit animals, but like a spitting llama or alpaca, I do my own version of spitting on people when they deserve it.

So much for tonight’s temper tantrum from me. The one thing I do take seriously from tonight’s rant is the treatment of llamas by unethical and stupid people. The rest is just a game.