Sunday 30 January 2011

Reddingvale Arrives!

Today did not start quite as early as planned.  Carl was given a bottle of wine for his birthday and, at ten o'clock last night, he suddenly remembered it.  One glass led to another and we ended up rather late to bed!

Despite this we had all the injections, drenches, foot trimming and body scoring done by 12, apart from Dude who has to wait until tomorrow.  The new injection method failed dismally, but not due to the method,  rather it was a slight mis measurement problem so we will try again tomorrow and I'll tell you about it then.

Everyone was very well behaved, apart from Bert who was highly hormonal.  Emily, Carolyn and Prue were the stars, barely needing to be held and lifting their feet perfectly.  Lina and Islay are always little monsters so they had theirs trimmed on the ground as usual, which they are fine with, so no dramas there.  In fact the only drama was when I broke the drench gun by letting it fall off the fence!

We then weaned Barnaby and Barry.  This went remarkably well - their Mum's haven't looked for them once and they haven't looked for their Mum's - lets hope it stays that way!

Then . . the big excitement!  Viv and Andy from Reddingvale came with Cassie, Zara and Dylan in a very smart stock trailer.  Dylan came out on his halter and walked beautifully into his paddock with Harry, Spike, Alf, Barry and Barnaby.  He is quite a cool young man and sauntered over as if he owned the place (after Andy had given him a manly cuddle!).  Zara and Cassie were straight off to explore their paddock - as Andy said, rather a higher altitude than they are used to.  Lina's crowd came over to investigate - I think Cassie will soon become the boss when they get together!  It was then back to the house for a coffee - no faints or trouser incidents so the state of the carpets was immaterial.  I forgot to ask if they needed the toilet and they were probably to afraid of what they might find in there to ask, which was a shame as they were specially cleaned and smelt very lovely with a musky pine fragrance, brand new soap (I'll go and whip that back into the packets for the next visitors) and clean towels.  Somehow Carl lured Andy into his shed, which I had told him firmly he must not do (he gets carried away talking about his bike).

After Andy and Viv had gone I went over to feed.  Viv had left Dylan, Cassie and Zara's bowls - all individually named.  I really did not see this working but, it did!  Despite Cassie's bowl being the furthest away from where she was she went straight over to it and Zara to hers.  Very well behaved, intelligent alpacas who can obviously recognise colours and read! 

Next up was Dylan.  I put down the troughs and the others rushed over.  Dylan lagged behind a bit, obviously way too refined for a trough made out of drainpipe, and when I put his named bowl down he came straight over and ate it all up!  Barry Norton tried to get his nose in but Dylan was having none of that!  Not a very good photo of him - I'll do some better ones tomorrow!


All three seem very settled - looking good!
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              

1 comment:

  1. Lovely looking alpacas Rosemary...I was going to say that they all look very dense...but obviously not if they can read already! :))

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