Our pride and joy are seen here together - Oreo and Cinnamon.  Oreo is our first Cria born to the Critter Basket.  He was born in the middle of May and took us by surprise - even after shearing his dam we could not tell for certain if she had been bred! With an 11 1/2 month gestation time, he came right on schedule. The Nubian doeling is his best friend - she was born in the midst of a snow storm on February 1st. If not for the timely arrival of our friends out to the barn where they were caring for our animals, Cinnamon would have been lost to the extreme wet and cold winter.  She has a super-sweet personality, calmly loving and the extreme opposite of mischievous play.  Together these two can cause quite the riots in the pasture!

The entire goat doe crew.  From the left: Angel (currently being hand milked), Max (short for Maximum), Cinnamon, Lilith (hiding behind Oreo) and Oreo, the alpaca cria, keeping watch.

Our “mostly useless,” but loveable, Alaskan Malamute, center, Morgan, and two Great Pyrenees, Andy (left) and Avalanche (right). Lanchie is handicapped (knee caps were put on wrong at birth) and Andy is from a rescue with no experience in guarding livestock. We shaved Lanchie this spring because the long Grt. Pyr. hair was causing sanitary problems with his crooked hind legs.  Normally, the two look nearly identical except for a few brown areas on Andy and the fact that Lanchie’s legs don’t work. We are protecting the livestock with our very capable male alpaca and our burro.

The little Huacaya Alpaca, Lightning, above, is now full grown and proven with his cria, Oreo, left, born to Aurora.  All three are seen in the current 2008 picture to the right, Lightning in the far right background.  Click on that picture to see the day Oreo was born and his first steps

At left, our bottle-raised ewe peers from behind Aurora.  “Lambie” is the last of our Suffolk/black-faced sheep. She will be bred this fall to an icelandic ram that I will be bringing home soon.  Aurora is our blue-eyed white female cria.  Her fiber tested 19 microns at one year old and 20 microns this past spring. We have high hopes for her son, Oreo, next spring at his first shearing!

This is the large loafing shed in which all of our females, excepting only Smokey, reside.  Oreo is still with his dam so he’ll stay with the girls for another few months until he is weaned.  The only animal in the shed in this picture is Lambie, resting in the shade during the heat of this summer day.  The shed faces south, has north-facing windows and has large overhead doors that can be swung down for greater protection from harsh winter winds.

Melody is a one year old Appaloosa filly. She came to us last fall, just before Christmas. Born in the pasture and raised in the pasture with her dam and sire, she was pretty wild when she first arrived. After a week or so she got used to us and decided that maybe humans weren’t so bad after all. She mingles with the goats, alpacas and ewe and gets along fine with everyone. There are times when she acts like a very large puppy, following us around as we work on fences or simply spend time in the pasture with the animals. I can only hope that this continues after we take her to be trained next year as a saddle horse.  After all, we got her so she could be ridden!

Checking out the newly secured fence in the girls’ pasture.