Today we traveled to Wisolina Farms, an alpaca farm, and we got a tour from Ronnie. The tour took us around the farm to see the cows, female and male alpacas, chickens, and a dog named Troll Slayer. Troll slayer was not the only named animal on the farm; all the alpacas were named as well. There was Maggie, Fern, Honey Butter, Mac and Malakai etc, but the cows are not named. The alpacas were freshly shaved except for their legs so it looked like they were wearing leg warmers. They did’t shave the legs because the fleece on the legs is not as high quality/valuable compared to the rest of the fleece. Alpacas often have two purposes, to provide a fleece to shear and sell, and to act as a guard animal for the cows and chickens against coyotes and foxes. The cows on the farm are not used for dairy, but for meat which is why none are named. The cows are bred to produce their offspring and when the first generation is older they are used for meat. There were two types of chickens on the farm, brown and white. The brown chickens lay brown eggs and the white chickens lay white eggs. The two have to be separated or the white chickens will get aggressive towards the brown chickens. Each chicken will lay up to one egg a day and will only lay in the sunlight. Although we were not able to feed the chickens, we were able to feed the cows and alpacas. The alpacas tended to be more on the shy side, except Mac, who would gobble anything near him. We put a small amount of feed in our hands and held it out for them to eat from, almost as if we were feeding horses. Sadly most of the alpacas did not let us pet them, accept Mac who would let you pet his head as long as you were feeding him at the same time. We also had a chance to feed the cows but some of them did not take our food. After that we watched a quick video on how to spin yarn and headed back to CA. On the combined bus rides there and back Claire, Kelly, and Mohala finished their first hats. Once we got back to campus we all sat around listing to music and knitted our hats, with some starting on their second.
