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Funny Storys About Animals
Super Mom To The Rescue!
Arriving home from my night job, I parked
the truck, glanced up and saw to my horror both my he-manly Herd sire and my
resident llama alarming on something on the ground. Picturing rattlesnakes and
water moccasins I flew out of the truck, dashed through the gate, leapt the
electric fence, (promptly mangling it and getting one heck of a shock) tore
through the pasture gate and skidding to a halt, lunch box at the ready to pummel the
intruding... BOX TURTLE! Oh, GOOD GRIEF!
Mistaken Identity.
My first alpaca breeding experience was rather strange. Once the (Brand new at this)
herd sire-to-be was done with his new duties, we led him back to the boys'
pasture. Shortly after, I hear my husband
yelling "KATHRYN! HE'S TRYING TO
KILL THE GELDING!"... racing around the barn I watch as he is in full
pursuit
of a terrified Titan, while orgling at the top of his lungs... After
a few seconds I had to explain to my husband (between
snickers) that it
wasn't FIGHTING that he was trying to do to Titan.... Apparently he really
LIKED his new
duties but was a bit confused as to where those duties ENDED. Abscessed Tooth Emergency
While feeding one day I noticed a HUGE and perfectly round
swelling on
Prissy's jaw... oh no! Haltered and examined, it was HARD... After a frantic
call to my vet and frantic
plea for help on Alpacasite I returned outside to
check on the poor thing again.. only to see that the 'abscess' had
disappeared... I had no idea they could pack food between cheek and gum THAT
tightly!.... The very red face I had took
days to disappear. Prissy's Second Day
At My Ranch.
Hubby had just finished installing surveillance cameras all over the barn
and fields outside
and so I was keeping an eye out through the TV in my
living room. I had only had Prissy a couple of days and as I passed
through
the living room, glancing at the TV, my heart nearly passed into my throat!
There she was on the TV screen,
down, obviously having convulsions and
unable to rise, thrashing about pitifully. I RACED out the front door, fell
down 4' of stairs, jumped strait up hoping the damage was not to great and
sped across the yard, jumped the electric
fence, tore through the pasture
gate, rounded the barn and skidded to a halt to confront a confused (and
standing)
Prissy, wondering why I had interrupted a perfectly good dust bath
... I had never seen them DO that before!!!
It only took a few weeks for
my bruises to heal...*sigh*.
Shear madness (true story!) By Steve Hull
Early on in this alpaca operation,
my business partner and I decided that we
would shear our alpacas. After all, he is a large animal veterinarian
and I
had sheared many sheep. An alpaca is just another fleeced animal - right?
Why pay someone to do what
we can do?
Tom lives in Wisconsin where he has his veterinary practice and the farm is
here in Oklahoma
where my wife and kids help out with farm chores. Tom was
glad to escape from the great white north and arrived
in late April ready to
shear over the weekend and bring back the beautiful bags of pristine fleece
we had read so
much about. He had confidently told his wife, children and
many of his clients he would return to Wisconsin with
the yearly fleece
harvest from the alpaca ranch.
I had purchased some re-furbished electric shears,
oiled up the motor,
sharpened the blades and we were ready to go. I re-read one of my old books
on shearing
sheep. Ahh, it was all clear to me. Six alpacas, three crias
and two idiots . . .
Sheep are somewhat
easy to shear. You pick them up, set them on their butt
and they sit there passively – only held a bit.
The shearer starts at the
top and shears down with the fleece coming off almost like a peeler works on
a potato.
That Saturday morning, my wife Kathy asked us when we would be done and I
confidently told her that about
15-20 minutes per animal should be about
right. It was about 9:30 AM so she said lunch would ready by 11:30 or
so.
While Tom and I prepared, he asked me how long it had been since I had
sheared. “Only a few years”
I replied, but it was actually more like ten
(fifteen to tell the truth . . . ).
“Would the alpacas
react like the sheep” Tom asked? “Of course”, was my
immediate and thoroughly confident reply
. . .
We led the first alpaca to the prepared site, and I grabbed her to place her
on her butt.
With a firm hold and deft swing, I then hoisted her up moving
the center of mass so that she was placed on her tail all
in one fluid
motion. Tom nodded and murmured approval and respect at my clear and
confident ways of managing
this potentially difficult situation. “No
problem” was my terse comment.
The alpaca just
sat there. In truth, I was flabbergasted, but I nodded
“knowingly” and asked for the clippers much
like a surgeon asks for the
knife. I was a professional and I knew just what I was doing. “Here”,
I
asserted, “hold the alpaca right like this”. Tom scurried around me and
supported the apparently calm
alpaca. It was really nice for me to show Tom
the large animal vet, some good alpaca management.
The next moments are somewhat of a blur and much has been reconstructed by
my wife and children. Suffice it to
say that alpacas can jump - in fact
quite high! Who would know? But what goes up will then come down.
There is a very, very brief moment of time (I think it is called a
nanosecond) between turning on a noisy clipper and
an immediate muscular
reaction of the “calm alpaca”. Somewhere, there is a picture of the two of
us looking up at this alpaca who was now considerably over our heads.
My family asserts that the alpaca
coming back to earth bowled both of us
over as it landed, the clippers went flying and every alpaca watching this
went to the farthest corners of the pasture as fast as they could run. That
is correct, we did not have any of
them in a pen and of course not one had a
halter on. The alpacas then turned and watched . . .
The
electric clippers were buried in mud, I was thoroughly humiliated and
Tom was laughing; “ha ha
ha, aren't we having fun”. He really is such
a good sport about this. My wife and children could
be seen rolling about
on the living room floor. I don’t know why.
We went to round up the
alpacas. Second mistake - they have eyes, they see,
they understand. The crazy “two legers” were
coming to get them and were
going to kill them with an infernal buzzing machine. Oh, did I mention that
these
were imports?
I think it was an hour or maybe two, time goes so fast when you are having
fun, but after
much effort, many bad words, sweat and such we had managed to
get one (1) of the alpacas cornered. For unclear
reasons, this dam was not
happy and now sweat was mixing with rumen juice - this stuff stings when it
gets into
your eyes.
While Tom grabbed and held her, we then both picked her up and carried her
back to the barn
to set up again. Who could know that they are so heavy? I
used the shears along the back blanket fleece.
The damn clipper made so
much noise that she tried to escape every time I approached her. But we
were clever
and were now doing this in a barn corner - in an area that had
been cleared of manure and hay. Kathy came out and
asked if we need help,
we stopped briefly and very calmly replied “no, we are doing just fine,
thank you”.
Kathy left, we watched and waited until she was out of sight and started our
frenzy again. Every time the
clippers were turned on, the “calm” alpaca
dragged Tom back and forth through the piles of manure that we
had so
carefully moved away. I scurried after both of them clippers buzzing, fleece
flying, alpaca alternately screaming/spitting
and Tom swearing. Who could
know they were so strong?
The alpaca learned that the extension cord
was only 25 feet long and that
the barn corner was 30 feet from the outlet. Who could know that they could
measure
so accurately?
The shearing was going really well. One alpaca had several shorn stripes
down its
back, we were both covered with slime, fleece was stuck to
everything, in our mouths, on our clothes and we were constantly
trying to
pick up pieces here and there. Much was green colored. Who could know the
volume of rumen
juice?
We both learned something profound and important that day - alpacas are not
sheep!
Meanwhile - the other alpacas just kept watching . . .
It gets hot and steamy in Oklahoma in late April and by 2 PM
we had one (1)
alpaca shorn. The fleece was collected and weighed - we got a lot from this
alpaca - about
two lbs with blanket, neck, leg/belly all in one soggy pile.
We had some really nice strips about a clippers blade in
width and about
twelve inches long.
Both of us were covered with bruises, hair matted, stinky in ways
I had not
known before.
The rest of the day and all day Sunday were . . . . well not much more
interesting
than the first part. I shall spare you the sordid details.
Humm, shearing season is soon coming up,
now shall I sell tickets to this
annual event? Na, I'll just pay the pros to do what they do best.
Dr. “Dork” and Associate
Ok, so a farm needs a guard dog right? And a guard dog needs to LOOK
like a guard dog. Baby is a Doberman. When I got her 14 years ago, I had never needed to have ears cropped on a dog so I did
my research, found a great vet, took her religiously each week for bandage changes. I watched carefully as he posted her ears
each week. Five years later I
bred her for the first and only time as I wanted a pup. Five pups stayed with me long enough that they needed ear cropping.
Now remember, when I'd dealt with ear posting before, I had but one puppy to deal with. There is a huge difference between
one puppy with bandaging on her ears and FIVE pups all pulling each other's bandages off daily. After half a dozen trips to
the vet for rebandaging, I got to thinking (always a bad sign), "It can't be that hard.... I've watched it done a hundred
times..... I can do this!" Right?....... ugh, yeah...... I was working night shift and on my way home the next morning, I stopped at the drug store and got everything
I would need. When I got home, Robert had already left for his job and the kids were all off to school. Ahh, quiet time. Just
me and 5 puppies! I carefully
laid out all of my supplies in the order in which I would need them on the left arm of the couch. I opened a beer and sat
it on the table next to the couch within easy reach, covered a tampon in skin tape, opened and re-capped the super glue (super
glue....another bad sign) lined up the scissors and opened the roll of gauze and VIOLA! Everything ready to go! I grabbed a puppy and got comfortable on the couch sitting
Indian style in my bicycle shorts and placed the pup on my lap. Got the puppy all calm and grabbed the post (AKA skin tape
covered tampon), coated one side liberally with super glue, grabbed the puppy's ear to hold it upright, which prompted an
immediate response from the energetic puppy thinking that I wanted to play. About three minutes later, the puppy is calm again
and I begin to carefully pry the tampon off of the palm of my hand and started over. Three tampons, 45 minutes , a lot of
curse words and half a roll of gauze later, I had the puppy finally convinced that this was NOT play time, the post in place
and I was holding it there for a minute or so with my right hand while I reached with my left hand to finally get my first
sip of my now warm beer. Puppy looked up and when he did I realized that my fingers were now firmly super glued to his ear
AND the tampon. *sigh* I go to sit my beer back down so that I could work my right hand free when I realized that my left
hand is now also glued to the beer can. Oh no........... An hour later, gauze and tape all over the living room, tape in my hair, coated in dried super glue,
I finally release the puppy (he seemed very relieved to get away from the crazy two-leger) with a perfectly posted
set of ears...... only 4 more to go.... Oh, Lord..... Maybe a break to stretch my legs before starting on the next pup would be a good idea......... yeah,
except that that's when I realized that my bicycle shorts were super glued to my thighs..... I did eventually learn how to post dober ears but only
after many hours of prying stuff off of me, prying me off of stuff, puppies and furniture and saying some really SPECIAL words.
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