While I was busy blogging about chicks yesterday morning, Amaryllis was busy having her cria. Lucky for me Margaret, my number one farm hand had gone down to the barn early to check on Lil Dude, at just the right time to help Amaryllis out.  She had a Black male alpaca, I think is name is Tuesday Marvin, for lack of imagination on my part.

  Today’s barn chores present a new challenge, some one is sick. With 30 alpacas in the barn it is difficult to figure out whom.   So how do I know someone is sick?    Well, alpacas, being such easy keepers all poop in the same spot, so the biggest part of morning barn chores is to clean all these communal piles. I throw the beans in the gator, bag a few up from my “Madam Manure poop sales” and dump the gator in the woods, where it becomes great compost. Then fill the water buckets, feed and hay and I am done until evening.  However, today on almost ever pile I cleaned, (one in the barn, one behind the barn, and one in the barn yard) some one had left a very watery mess.  

 Many things go thru my mind, first and foremost, who is it?  I put grain in the feed bins, lined up along the walls of the barn and then it’s real easy to go down the line and lift each tail as they are busy with breakfast.   I only got kicked twice!  So far so good.   But no dirty butts, darn. All the babies look fine…   I have to get to the “bottom” of this, what if it is something contagious?  What if a baby gets sick?  They could dehydrate very quickly.  Collecting a sample for my vet to check would be helpful, but this is like collecting dirty water from the ground, not going to work.  So here you are reading a blog about diarrhea,(nothing better to do huh?) and here’s the really hard part, I will have to go down and lie in my hammock in the shade in the pasture until I catch the culprit.  See farming is really hard work!   Spent three days in the hammock last week waiting for babies, and then missed one, and now this!