Peaceful Heart's Ziva David with her mom

The spring alpaca cria birthing season has finally begun at Peaceful Heart Alpacas!  We are starting the season out right with a beautiful little girl from Powergrid and Zia.  Our newest farm member is a fawn and white girl named Peaceful Heart’s Ziva David.

Around 10am, we noticed that Zia seemed to be in the first stage of labor.  She was obviously uncomfortable; getting up and down and straining at the poop pile, all typical signs.  We kept a close eye on her, yet she still managed to sneak the cria in while we looked away to take a phone call.  Mike finished his call, looked out and saw the cria fall to the ground.  Little Ziva is a strong girl and was wiggling around to get her feet under her from the start.  We have high winds today, so Mike and David moved Zia and Ziva into the barn to get dried off and give here time to get on her feet without the wind trying to blow her over.  They are both doing great and will hang out in the barn until tomorrow, when the weather is supposed to warm and the winds die down.  The farm will be open 1-5pm tomorrow (10am-5pm Monday-Saturday), and we invite everyone to come and see her.  We are anxiously awaiting quite a few more crias this spring.

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Ziva’s dam is a relative newcomer to the farm, as she moved on to the farm just last year.  This is our first cria from Zia, and we are thrilled with her.  Zia has an interesting genetic background of Bolivian, Chilean and New Zealand ancestry most of whom were dark colors.

Ziva’s sire is our fabulous Powergrid.  This is cria number 12 for us from Powergrid, and he has once again passed on his unmistakable look and fleece.  Ziva looks a lot like Powergrid (and her siblings), especially in the face.  Powergrid was recognized nationally this year, for his ability to pass on his consistently fine fleece to his offspring.

We just received the first results back from the 2013 MAPCA Spin-Off, and we are excited to share them with you.

Our lovely gray Shareen won First in her class of 6 alpacas.

J Dubs 40, “Dubbie”, won Second in his class.  He was marked down for his muddy tips, but the judge commented that his fleece “glows” and is “extremely lofty with nice handle”.

We are extremely proud of our lovely June Delight. June won First place in her class, and also won Highest Scoring Brown Alpaca in the show.

The spin-off is one of the four types of alpaca shows in which we enter our alpacas. For the spin-off, we send in a 2 ounce sample of the blanket fiber from our alpacas with a copy of their Alpaca Registry Certificate and a photo of them in full fleece. A section of the fiber is handspun and judged on fiber characteristics, spinability, and the quality of the spun yarn.