Baby #2 - Ophelia

The story of this baby really starts with the birth of her mother, Lucy, about 3 years ago. What an adorable baby....whose name quickly morphed into "Lucifer". She was like a spoiled 2 year old. Baby alpacas are generally pretty curious about the humans who take care of them and will occasionally give kisses and act like the adorable little furry creatures that they are. Not Lucy! There was no love for us from the beginning. So we've learned to live with her underlying dislike (hatred seems a little strong) of 2 legged mammals. She was bred for the first time last spring to our farm stud Luciano. Once a female is bred, we occasionally will bring the male back to her to see if she still seems receptive and therefore not pregnant. Lucy was one of about 7 females bred last spring and so nearly every day Luciano would don his halter to be led to the girls field to either breed or be spit at (when we say "not receptive" we mean it!) As soon as Lucy heard the clinking of the halter (mind you, we hadn't even gotten it on Luciano yet) she went into full attack pose. Nevermind that we weren't testing/breeding her. She was letting everyone know, right down to the chickens, that she had been bred once (thank you very much) and once was plenty.

Fast forward to Spring '08. Lucy's due date was sometime the first week in May and so we'd spend what seemed like hours watching her abdomen for baby movement. Nothing! Normally you can kind of tell by the female's overall temperment if they are pregnant but Lucy is not so normal. We decided to shear her with everyone else so that maybe we could see the baby's movements more clearly on a shorn belly. Still nothing really definitive until the next day when adorable little Ophelia was born. Snow white ball of fluff with a brown tail and brown toes. We'd really like to show you a picture of Lucy and Ophelia but Ophelia is a chip off the old block. They know that a camera is just another way we're planning on killing them and they avoid it and us like the plague. To Lucy's credit she is a fiercely protective and wonderful mom. That's enough for us.