Field Testing......

Or some people call it a "Spit Off". I'll call it field testing because that's how I was taught. It's basically a method of determining if a female alpaca could be pregnant. The female will "spit-off" a male if she's pregnant. However, that is not always the case. She may run, have her tail up, stand sideways, neck arched with tail up, pronk, as well as spit.

In any case, we put the female with the adult male and then observe. The male will approach the female with his orgling sound. You then observe how the female is acting. If she's not interested she'll run, spit, kick, etc. and she's most likely pregnant. If she shows interest, she may run a bit wagging her raised tail and sit down fairly quickly. That's not a good thing as she more than likely is not pregnant.

You could do an ultrasound or blood test but that can be costly, so this is a fairly effective and no cost method which suits us just fine.

In any event, the end result was that Marilyn was still pregnant and Shakira was not. We will breed Shakira in the Fall and field test the girls again at that time.

We had friends in for the weekend and after finishing the barn chores we worked up an appetite and had a day in the kitchen cooking Italian dishes including homemade pizzas as an appetizer. I wish I could bottle the aroma from the kitchen as it smelled heavenly. Inhaling the tantalizing aromas made you think you were in Umbria, in the Tuscan countryside. There's nothing like having a ristorante experience in the comfort of your home.

We also opened up some of our very own homemade Ambriel Acres Alpacas Barolo that was bottled several months back here on our farm.

Sipping some vino, listening to Italian folksongs, watching the sun set with alpacas pronking in the field with good friends and family....... It doesn't get any better than that!