Nic's Great Adventure

As most of you know, if you've done any reading here, you know that almost two years ago my wife and I went into a joint venture with my sister and her husband and started an alpaca farm. It's been a learning experience for us all, and the alpacas are wonderful animals to be around and fill a lot of hours with pleasure taking care of them.

Recently, our second to the youngest male(my wife and I own three males) was allowed his first sexual encounter. It was an amazing thing to witness, and believe it or not, if you know nothing about alpacas, the mating ritual is actually quite a romantic encounter. It's actually amazing to watch the male and female get together for the first time, because he actually kisses her on the head, and if she so inclines to be a part of this ritual with the male, she not only kisses him back on the head, she actually lies down for him to mount her.

We then go into the actual mating itself, which is a very lengthy process, and not uncommon to go as long as 45 minutes. (Kingfish, eat your heart out!) The male has this noise he makes during the entire process, and I may possibly have the spelling wrong, but it's called orgling. And it's not quiet, either.

Anyway, Nic was not only done in a much shorter period of time, but at first, we thought maybe he might be Greek...but he finally got things done correctly, and for days afterward, he walked around with his head held high, thinking himself quite the macho man.

Five days later, we brought him and his lover back together again, and once again, you could see the excitement building in the little dickens as we brought him and Amber back together again. This time, however, she promptly turned and spit right in his face. This is taken as a sign that the female is pregnant. If indeed this is the case, then Nic has much to be proud of, since this was his very first mating. And if indeed Amber did get pregnant during this first encounter, this means we have a very fertile male and we can begin studding him out in the very near future. This is our hope, this is our dream, and this is a part of our retirement investment in the years to come.

Late last week, just to check again, my sister once again led Nic over to Amber's side of the barn and this time, she spit all over him, time after time, so we're feeling very good now that the mating has indeed been a success, although I don't think Nic was none too pleased.

The attached picture is of Nic, in the middle, with his proud owner on the right(that would be me), and our youngest male, Trevor on the left. Nic is hard to see in this picture, but I can assure you, if alpacas can smile, Nic is surely doing so in this picture.