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Tuesday, October 25, 2005

Peruvian or Chilean

We bought alpaca this week. After 2 years of planning and dreaming Aardwolf Alpacas is born. We hooked up with a woman (Ellen) in Albuqueruque who helped us find a starter pair of Alpaca. The question of the week was Peruvian or Chilean... Ellen had built quite a nice little business for herself in 3 years and was strict in her discipline to breed only Pure Peruvian Alpaca. Most other breeders don't do this and tell us just follow your instincts and buy quality animals ad you can't go wrong. Our trouble.. we don't have "experienced instincts" just yet, so following her advise did not seem like an unreasonable thing to do.

On Thursday, when we were working the deal to buy Alpaca two (Serena) she had a baby (Bonus). She was female and black (double and triple bonus). The baby was not Pure Peruvian.. but easily worth $10,000. So we decided to buy a third animal, that my instincts told me to buy.. 3/4 chilean, and bred to a 1/2 Bolivian.. But I think she is really a nice animal. Now I guess we will see 1st hand how much difference it makes to stick with Peruvian.

Unfortunately, the baby died on Saturday. She had been pre-mature and the owner hadn't known she was born for some time I guess, and she was born in the freezing rain. She caught Pneumonia and never recovered. So.. Bonus snagged back! Our first blow. We are sticking with the three anyway, and now are trying to arrange insurance, shipping, breeding, visits, not to mention fencing. Fun stuff. With all the logistics it looks like we will be lucky if they are on our property by New Years, so I am practicing my patience (tough for me). in the mean time there is always fencing to keep us occupied (right Monica?).