My Trip to the Alpaca Ranch

I went back to that alpaca ranch today to pick up the final load of rabbit manure. While there I decided to take some pictures using my cell phone.








This one's really neat. He's the only one that wasn't afraid of me and when I would scratch his neck, he'd throw his head back like this.



This is one of the many rabbits they have. I forget what breed he is but he is a baby and you can see Momma Rabbit looking on.

Hahaha, looks like you got a new buddy there! Some great pics and that is really pretty country.

The scenery here is especially neat here at two times of the year. The first is in the middle of summer when the corn fields are growing like crazy and then again in the fall, when you see all of the colored leaves.

True story......from last week.

I've been busy scouring my local craigslist for free manure sources. I found an Aplaca farm 45 mins away and was on the road (somewhat near there one day) and decided to take the trip. Now the manure was listed at $5 a tractor scoop (which is darn well near free) and I had some grain bags I took to haul it back in my car...yes CAR...the farmer thought i was mad as people only ever use trucks to haul this stuff. Well seeing as I don't own a truck, me and my trusty 97 camry were on poop detail. The farmer drives into what looked like a mountain of poop and scooped from the middle what was a glorious scoop of black gold. It had been composting for months. I know Alpaca is not "hot" like rabbit poop and can be used right away but I wanted to add bulk to my already growing pile. This stuff was literally steaming as I took my spade and dug into the tractor scoop to fill the bags. My car was loaded !!!! Trunk was full, two bags in the back seat strapped in with seatbelts (after all, one has to protect one's investment..LOL) and one in the front. That one scoop must have weighed 400 lbs...honestly!!! and for $5 bucks.....what a steal!!!! As I'm driving home, all the windows in the car began to fog up and it took me a while to figure out it was from the steaming poop in all the bags!!!! Hilarious. So I drive the whole journey home with open windows and of course 10 minutes from home, the heavens open up and it begins to rain. Myself the car and the poop all made it to my pile safely where it is happily steaming away into a nutritious batch of compost for springs SFG.

P.S I scored totally free Horse and Rabbit poop from two other farms. Adding to that the mountain of leaves I collected and my veggie scraps, I'm well ahead of where I was last year.

Got poop?

Haha! Good story!

A few weeks ago I went to that alpaca ranch to pick up some bagged alpaca poop. They had some of those bags sitting for a few days until I got there. Well, when I got home and added them to the compost pile, it was almost brick-like. I broke them up the best I could. It took several whacks with the pitchfork but I got it done.
In my Chevy Cobalt, I hauled about 30 gallons of horse manure(in buckets!), maybe 40 pounds of bagged alpaca manure, 30 pounds of bagged rabbit manure, two 5 gallon buckets of fish scraps from a trout hatchery, and 4 30 gallon bags of compressed/shredded leaves.
Surprisingly, my car doesn't smell.

Maybe I should get a pickup huh? LOL

TTT said,

it was almost brick-like. I broke them up the best I could

Mine was too !!! I tried the pitch fork but it was still too large for my liking so I put on gloves and used my hands to crush it into finer pieces. Crumbled nicely in my hands. For some odd reason, I really like rummaging through my compost pile.

Why is it that I, who has a pickup truck, can't seem to find any local sources of poop. Murphy's Law

I finally found a lady with horses who let me have 4 bushles (free) but no more as they use it for their own extensive row garden.



Kay

walshevak wrote:Why is it that I, who has a pickup truck, can't seem to find any local sources of poop. Murphy's Law

I finally found a lady with horses who let me have 4 bushles (free) but no more as they use it for their own extensive row garden.



Kay

Did you try craigslist?? That's how I found the free horse manure.

I knew what llamas were but I never heard of alpacas until I was driving home one afternoon in the late summer and passed an alpaca farm. I didn't really think anything of it but when I joined this site back in October and started reading up on composting, I discovered the benefits of alpaca and llama poop in a compost pile. I did a bing search and found 3 different alpaca farms. I emailed all of them asking about manure and within a few days, one of them wrote back to me. So that's where I got the alpaca poop and rabbit poop(they also raise rabbits)

TTT, you got the bonus farm with Alpaca and runny babbit:D

nKedrOoStEr wrote:TTT, you got the bonus farm with Alpaca and runny babbit:D

Runny Babbit????