This weekend was the annual alpaca association conference up in Auckland, at which I was an invited guest. The guest thing is a great racket where they pay for my transport and board, all I have to do is give some talks, and chair some discussions! Easy!
The conference was pretty good. Some of the talks were quite educational (especially Jane Vaughn talking about Embryo Transfer in Australia, which as really taken off and lots of ET babies are being born). There were also some good talks on marketing, branding and business-development. All very useful, and I plan to apply some of those lessons to our own operation.

The conference was also a great networking opportunity, so I happily schmoozed.

The hotel/conference center was, however, really dry. The AC system constanlty pumped around the de-humidified air, and it was living in an airplane for 3 days. So not surprisingly I have dry sinuses, and sore throat, and now find myself fighting off some illness.

Sadly while I was up there we had yet another alpaca death. Manticore, Cindy’s cria, crashed and died on Sunday, giving Tam a harrowing day. PM on Monday showed it was peritonitis- infection of the gut and abdominal cavity. Had probably been chronic for months. We had noticed he was a bit thin and lagged occasionally, but he would also run and pronk with the other cria, and seem normal.  Lots of second-guessing. Alpaca are too damn stoic, and it makes diagnosis too damn hard. I got home from the conference in time to help Tam and bury him. Really hoping the rain of shoes is done, ’cause it is tiring waiting for yet another to drop.