We got lucky again!  We had a lovely camping weekend planned nearby to Toft so that we could visit the alpacas and spend a bit of time outdoors - and Marie gave birth to her baby the day before we arrived.  We are lucky to have another strong young male cria and all of our alpacas are doing well!

Having 2 male crias isn't great for growing the herd - as really we would have preferred females, the babies are showing promise to have good fleeces so we are hopeful that we may have a chance taking them to a show next year.  We will keep a good eye on them but they come from very strong champion stock on their father's side (Beck Brow Explorer).  

I won't go on and on - here are some more photos of cute fuzzy alpacas - because I know that's what most people want to see!

We had a visit to Toft to see our alpacas today.  We knew they were in the pregnant mother's field waiting for imminent births.   We had a quick peak in the top paddock and saw a couple of moms with their cria there and then we we walked all around the field looking for Marie and Anduril.  We were able to find Marie - luckily it's super easy as she's got the brown spot on her neck.  She was still looking a pregnant as ever with no cria running around.  But we couldn't find Anduril...so we walked around again and still nothing.  Feeling a bit worried we wandered back up to the top paddock to see the new babies that had just been born - and that's when we noticed that one of the mom's was Anduril.  She had just had her cria a couple hours before we arrived!!  Our first cria. 

We later learned that it was a little boy - which we named Aluminum (Anthony really wanted an alpaca that we could call Al - Like Al Paca...).  So aluminum was the closest natural mineral / precious metal that we could find that would shorten to Al.  Since the company is JADE Alpacas we are going to keep the names in line with that and use precious stones and minerals.

Now for a few cute photos!