Alpaca Breeder Strike

Alpaca shortages!

Stock up here now

Sorry, couldn't resist that!  We haven't been on strike but first I was hit by an almighty cold - worst I have had for years - I couldn't breathe, my body wouldn't move faster than an ancient slug and I felt totally rotten.  Had to carry on though but it got really bad when the Grasstrak needed applying to the fields.  We meant to borrow the spinner again but with Carl working down in Torquay, Sam working till late and weekends filled up it had to be done by hand again.  After I had manfully struggled round one paddock on foot, Carl took pity on me and drove me round with me sitting on a garden chair in the bucket.  He kindly stopped and took the trouble to take a photo of me - ensuring, of course, that I looked my best!

Anyway I am almost recovered nearly three weeks later having missed the Futurity which I hear was very good and the standard outstanding - congratulations to all.

The second reason for the lack of blog was computer problems.  We had an intermittent connection and Sam had a go at fixing it - which resulted in no internet at all AND no phone!  Finally, tonight he discovered the problem - not my fault at all (he had been blaming me) he had plugged a lead in to the wrong slot!  We are now up and running, but very slowly, so I am hoping this will actually publish eventually.

It has been a busy time but now I am taking some time out to catch up on other people's blogs - and to decide on who goes where when everyone goes into their new paddocks at the end of April.  Greeves is the real monkey at the moment.  He seems to enjoy winding up Alf and Harry by jumping on them but they don't turn on him, they then start fighting with each other while he looks on!

 

Nearly Christmas!

As usual, Christmas has come upon me!  I have iced the cake, bought and wrapped the presents but I still have to clean the house, buy some food and find clothes which are not covered in mud.  That will, however, have to wait until the sheep have been moved, alpaca food bought, new hay rack constructed for Bert (she broke the old one).  I think she feels a little sorry about it - or maybe she is just planning her next misdemeanour (Zara is in the backgound, looking  grumpy because she can't quite get the hang of carrots and  keeps dropping them).

I left out Bert's legs as they are filthy and she looks pretty clean at the top.  Long distance shots also seem to work in this weather - Here is Greeves.

And finally - Trouble, Bert's baby.  She has recovered from whatever was wrong with her but I have gone back to giving her a night time bottle.  I relented as I was so worried she was going to expire on me!

And, talking of gorgeous  young ladies, for a better idea than my rather weak attempt at a Festive field shelter go to - http://beckbrowalpacas.blogspot.com/2011/12/have-gorgeous-christmas.html

The Midget?

Another murky, grey damp day today and all alpacas are looking like drowned rats!

I keep thinking Greeves is still tiny - Here is a rear end view - the only way Greeves would face today.

Here is his best friend, Harry - a perfectly normal size alpaca -

And here they are together.  Greeves is looking a much better size now I think and it is partly my imagination that makes him seem such  midget!

Where next?!

The blogs have been getting increasingly sporadic of late and this is mainly due to a lot of difficult decisions being mad here and the necessity of being away from the house quite a lot!

Normal service will be resumed at some point but in the mean time please forgive my lack of regularity.  I think a lot of people realise by now that our house is up for sale and we are making difficult decisions about where we are going and what we are doing - all made even more difficult by Sam and his future.

We have also had to make a difficult decision regarding our land - and a decision we never thought we would be making - but life has very funny turns within it.  It should be a time of great excitement and plan making but sadly it is rather too difficult for that!  No doubt we will get through somehow and the right thing will happen but right now we feel rather like we are herding cats as one bit comes together another bit of the jigsaw flies off over the hedge (rather a lot of mixed metaphors in there!).  I have to say we are also pretty heartbroken at - possibly - leaving all the good friends we have made here not to say panicy about being homeless - with 3 chickens, 34 alpacas, 1 dog and two cats - not to mention 20 sheep!

It only remains to be said that we are pretty clueless about where we will end up now!   So - updates will follow at some point!

The alpacas are surviving all this trauma - in fact, despite me constantly telling them, they are completely oblivious.  All are doing well.  Lina's baby has put on no weight whatsoever in the last two weeks  but is lively and totally refuses the bottle.  Trouble, the Bert and Samson baby, is putting on weight steadily despite having very little of her bottle now.

From the left - Yossarian, The Slink, Trouble, String and Striker (Carolyn's baby and real name - Strikingly Cool).  He is a real little monster and very strong but lovely with it - here he is posing!

Sam continues to do his 'sort of' job' over at Stalbridge Weston - he loves it but I am not sure there is enough work there for anything anymore permanent.  He also makes frequent forays to Milborne Port which he now feels is one of the best places on this earth!  When we went over to pick him up the other day I made the acquaintance of a lovely young man who must be one of the leading authorities on cars - he was even able to tell me which car I had now - something I was unsure of - it is an escort and a very nice one with one drawback.  It has heat shield things under it and I have a tendency to bend them which makes them clatter if I don't change gear at precisely the right moment.  Carl says I am a fool to take it down the track in the field.

Ashton Lane came to visit at one point and as rain was threatening we set up a cosy cafe in the field (and yes those are the fleeces waiting to be sorted for the GWR show!). 

Luckily the luxury accommodation was not required but I did get the chance to show Carol and Peter Yossarian - sired by their Legacy.  He soon gave up scratchign and started to show of his baby orgling and jumping everything skills.

And finally - Greeves - doing well but refusing to look at the camera!

NOT what I needed!

Just a quick photo less blog tonight I am afraid due to aching in just about every bone in my body - particularly my back and legs, so I feel a little ancient!

Feeding Trouble tonight and Lina dashed over.  I thought she had mislaid her baby again but then saw him behind her (He now has a name - Accidentally Cool or Axle for short).  He fussed around feeding and then started trying to feed from Trouble.  This made me feel my suspicion that he might not be getting enough milk could be true.  I stuck the rest of Trouble's bottle in his mouth (I always make up more than I know she usually takes) and he drank the lot with Lina watching and looking as if she were saying, "About time  - you did that for Greeves!"

I don't want to start bottle feeding if not necessary so I shall make up double for Trouble and do her first then top him up if he looks like he wants it. Weighing tomorrow so we will see how we go.

Greeves has also been weaned for the second time!  He was weaned from Mum months ago and has no interest in her despite being back in the same paddock as her.  Instead it is now Aunty Islay he is being weaned from!  He is distraught but I can't leave him in with the girls for much longer and he has started to pester Emily.  Poor Greeves!

Going well

We have a name - Squadron Leader Tilbo (not sure what the i stands for but we had to have a vowel, Judi!).


Today much time has been wasted in watching the two of them.  Slinky is adventurous and charges around sniffing at everyone - she now weighs 11kg so is doing fabulously!  Tilbo is still a bit sleepy but has lots of mad bursts of energy in between.  Zara follows him around constantly and chases Slinky away if she comes near - Zara isn't his Mum, Cassie is and she is very laid back about it all!  Greeves was scared stiff of them yesterday but today has been having tentative sniffs at Tilbo - Slinky is far too lively for him!

Sam and I have also prepared the barn for the hay which we are hoping to start cutting soon. 

A day for yawning

Shopping this morning while Sam got the 'new' chain harrow ready for action - it is very big!

We then checked over the sheep and I am very pleased to report that all eyes seem to be clearing up well.  I had half an eye on the alpacas all day but no one produced and I could not really kid myself that anyone was likely.  In fact everyone looked a little tired and listless.  I don't think Greeves could yawn anymore than he was!

The clutch arrived

The clutch kit did arrive so Carl fixed that and I saw the Bath and West disappear in to the great blue yonder - but no!  Carl has decided going would be a very good thing - so that is where we will be!  Luckily, this was decided before I ran over the pipe on the poo picker, yanking out of it's socket and causing much wailing and lamenting from both Carl and Sam.  They have now fixed it but I have strict instructions never to drive with it trailing behind me.

Sam is staying at home to look after the animals tomorrow - he is quite happy with that as long as I bring him back a present!  There shouldn't be any births yet, although Belinda still looks imminent.  Everyone in the girls' paddock has been tired today - Greeves was flat out -

As was Cassie, who is not a very tidy sleeper!

The boys though, were pretty lively - Barnaby Rudge is desperate to play with Greeves!

Chasing our tails!

All go again today and not much time for sitting around alpaca watching.  I did take a few photos and as I was looking at them I realised that Greeves is actually growing.  He doesn't look quite such a baby anymore.  Here he is with Crispie and his Aunty Islay.

Belinda has been lying down and either sleeping or eating with the occasional roll.

I ended up wishing I was an alpaca as I have been hoovering, polishing and putting flowers in vases (definitely not normal behaviour for me!).  Carl has finished painting the house and is now finishing off some fencing - garden not field - it has been too windy to shear - we learnt our lesson on that one!

 No time to admire the view today!

Now we are off to Mother's who volunteered to cook dinner!

Preparing for a Visitor

I now have a delicious looking honey ring, a fabulous flan and a tempting fruit cake - Carl was very disappointed when I said he could not test them - Thank you GHN!

After a dodgy start to the day, involving an awful lot of rusty tin, things progressed swimmingly - but now I find I have achieved very little - Spike's suspected abscess looks bigger, the scab has come off the cut on Barry's shoulder and spraying it with wound plaster has made it look awful, Bert spat at me as I climbed the fence and Sam has "Unidentified, random pains" which looks like, so he says, he may not make school tomorrow.  Sock fluff and cat hair refused to be lifted and the kitchen walls are disgusting.  I have bags of unsorted fleece everywhere so I must now give up and have a bath with a P.G. Wodehouse for company!

Thank you for the kind comments on Greeves - sadly, he still looks like a cartoon character at the moment!

I am the Greeves Fan Club!

Visit from The Grey Haired Neighbour this morning who sent me this very nice picture she took.  From the right - Crispie, Flem standing with Islay lying behind her.  Then lovely little Greeves (looking at the camera and scratching, Bert looking the other way and Cassie lying down at looking.  Behind in the other paddock are Prue and Lina with Carolyn and Emily lying down behind.  The Grey Haired Neighbour has now gone on a cake making mission in honour of The Great Jayne!

Greeves has me very overexcited at the moment - we had his fleece stats back this morning.  I know we have to be cautious on this one.  He has been near death's door at least twice and we must take into account that well known phenomena of starvation fineness (well, well known to all but me who only discovered it this morning!).  We really will not know what he is really like until next fleece sample and the current fleece has no hope for it due to the hay, seeds and probably even small colonies of pygmy tribes living undiscovered with in it BUT - there is hope!  His mean fibre diameter is 14.4 with an SD of 3.9 and 0.6 over 30 microns.  We have a lovely little tight packed graph all squashed up at the top of the page!

Lumps and Bumps

It's okay, I have stopped muttering (well, actually it was screeching)!  Good news and bad today.  First the good, Jayne from Zanzibar is winging her way over for a visit on Friday.  Lovely to hear her voice on the phone today, now I just have to get the house looking presentable - she has a very clean house, create food - she makes a very good cake and have a long chat with the animals to tell them all to behave themselves, some hope!  One of the Owls is flying over with her under their wing - roll on Friday!

On the bad side shearing has revealed a problem - poor Spike (the wether) appears to have an abscess.  It is a round lump, squidgy but does not appear to be painful.  If it is an  abscess it must be my fault and made doubly bad because it is really not where I should have been injecting.  I  am not happy with myself and phoned the vet.  The vet says just to monitor it for now so we'll give it a daily check.  Next I discovered poor Barry has a little cut on his shoulder which was not there yesterday.  Alf is starting to fight a bit and I hope it wasn't him that did it.  Now Alf has been sheared, he looks even bigger and the little ones look even smaller so I think I might have to take the two little ones out. 
The two bottle fed lambs - Limpit and Nonlimpit - are doing very well and no longer limp.  After a couple of days I ran out of the original antibiotic so used Excenell in desperation and that seemed to do the trick.  It also finally cleared Mum's mastitis.  Dobby seems very happy to have black lambs in with him (he is black) and he and Caedmon are back with my white Texel cross sheep but Limpit and Nonlimpit are in with them with their Mum (they are destined to become pets!).  This afternoon The Limpits were jumping all over Dobby while he tried to sleep - Caedmon (white) was on the other side of the field with Stumpy's baby (white) jumping on him.  I know I have said it before but it is fascinating how alpacas seem to react to different coloured animals.

Greeves surprised me just now.  I went over to give Bert her evening tickle (she is particularly fond of a rub under the chin and at the top of her leg) and Little Greeves came over for a kiss - he hasn't done that for several weeks.  He then surprised me even more by charging around and trying to mount every one of the girls - very unsuccessful as he is too small!  He does look rather odd at the moment as we tried not to shear him too short and it has made him look as if he has a very fat tummy!  Having said that he is actually getting much better, not really skinny at all now.

Little Wee has totally recovered from being spayed and, thank goodness, no longer roams around calling all the wild cats. 

She gets on very well with Smudge but Cruella is still wary of her.  The ladder is there as Carl is painting the outside of the house!

Been a little hectic!

I am really sorry about the lack of blogging!  Life has been a little hectic with 19 lambs charging around.  Their favourite game seems to be all trying to balance on their mother's backs.

In the end just 3 of the sheep needed help - one set of enormous twins from George who are now very healthy, and two of the black sheep who had lambs in the wrong positions.  One was a bit hairy but we managed - although she is now very friendly -!  The triplets mum developed mastitis which has meant milking her twice a day to get rid of the horrid turned milk, unpleasant but tonight we started getting proper milk from one teat.  The twins are still being bottle fed and had joint ill.  One is now fully recovered and very sweet but the other is still limping.  She limps very fast though, so I think she will be okay.  Two Tone, one of last years bottle fed orphan lambs meanwhile is becoming very jealous and likes to try jumping on my back whenever I am feeding the twins - not so cute now she is so big!  Here she is trying to look cute through the pylon!

Greeves looks tiny now he has been sheared but is no longer thin.  He is very small though!  Islay is still his favourite alpaca in the whole wide world and he has now gone off me and no longer wants a cuddle, which is not a bad thing.  We sheared him as quick as possible and deliberately tried to leave it a little longer so it is not the neatest shearing in the world - but at least all the hay is out.

So - - don't be surprised if I don't blog again until the weekend!!

Little Black Bundles Everywhere!

Triplets, twins and a single to start the day - you don't know which end of the paddock to monitor!  The triplets are very sweet and wait in line to get a feed.  The Shepherd came over this morning when he brought Sam back and was a bit disappointed in me as I hadn't latched it onto the single mum but it just all goes out of your head when you have got little black bundles appearing all over the place!  The triplets are going in the field shelter tonight with their mum.  So far there are 9 lambs - 7 girls and 2 boys, and here is Sam with one of the triplets!

He really needs his hair cut!

In between all this lambing I managed to get the fields and field shelters cleaned - and visit the shops.  Greeves, I am pleased to say, is not quite so cuddly and marches off when I go over to him so I think he is doing well!  Here he is with Cassie - Islay is never far away, you can just see her leg behind Cassie.

Now I must get back to the field as I feel another set of  twins is on the way!

Spinning sorted (fertiliser that is!)

Very lovely sunny day today which was great but brought back the water problems.  It is not that we haven't got water, it is just that the alpacas keep wasting it!  Lina's group, the boys and Dude are fine - they just drink it.  Bert's lot are very different, they squabble over it, stand in it and kick it over.  By lunch time I had refilled three times and reverted to the summer system of lots of troughs as they cannot share!

Bert absolutely has to have her own water which she stamps in first and then sits down next to and slurps and dribbles.
Cassie spent a lot of the morning asleep and oblivious to everything.

Greeves just ate!

And Dude attempted a bit of posing - no one took any notice of him!



Then, once Carl got back, we had a bit of a rush round and then headed off to Reddingvale as Andy very kindly had offered to lend us his spinner (fertiliser spinner not some crazy spinning lady he has in his shed).  Despite the warmth of the weather I had to keep my body warmer firmly in position as I had mislaid an essential, at my age, item of clothing - doesn't matte over the field but once you get into polite company it is not on!  Andy also showed us a little something he has and I am really jealous - I want one!

A Day Well Spent

Craft night went well on the carding front - and on the knitting front - but not so good on the spinning!  Thanks to Jayne we now know which hand is supposed to move and that may help!  The carrier wool kept shooting back through the hole last night - minus any alpaca fleece!  Tonight, after a takeaway, we shall be trying again.

Today the weather has been lovely so we have got quite a bit done.  We had to go over to Mole Valley this morning to get a few things for lambing and Sam was desperate to spend a voucher he had on a shepherds' crook (if he attempts to capture me by the leg one more time it will go flyling down the hill!).  Then Carl and Sam did a bit of track maintenance, attempting to get rid of the ruts, followed by chain harrowing up in third.

Meanwhile, I was on the John Deere cutting nettles in Dude's stud paddock - it feels like summer is on the way when you start having to cut things!

It wasn't until quite late in the afternoon that I had to take my sunglasses off - first time of wearing this year - only to find I had lost my ordinary glasses.  Some time later I discovered them in the sheep paddock with Stumpy keeping guard - they were in their case.  I must have dropped then out of my pocket while I was cuddling Two Tone earlier (Two Tone likes to sit on your knee and have her chin rubbed which she is beginning to get far too big for!).  Feed time was the normal rowdy affair in top paddock with Cassie sounding like she was being killed.  She has to have an entire trough to herself (she has decided that the bowl is not big enough) so I spread it very thinly so it takes longer)

Everyone else squashes up together!

Greeves in a pen with Islay did not work and he still shows no interest in any sort of food but, he continues to gain weight!

I don't think he can see out much anymore!  Here he is with Belinda in the background.

Action Shots are difficult!

Another sunny but cold day.  In the village, when I popped down this morning, it was warm - I think the Shepherd has got his onion sets in now so things must be warming up, just hope the warmth reaches the top of the hill soon!

More halter training this evening and the star is Spike - the one we were not even planning on halter training!

I have had a bit of a photographic failure day today.  This shot is supposed to be Lily running down the hill with her fleece rippling - it does, and looks brilliant, but by the time I had got the lens cap off I had missed it

Instead of walking regally past, she scratched her bottom -

and then refused to face the camera!

Not much luck with Greeves either.  Today he was actually doing some running - not something we have seen a lot of, but as soon as the camera came out - he just stood still and did his standing still pose.  He has got a nice little 'beard' materialising though!

Pictures!!

Bert is not a donkey!

I have gone a bit picture mad tonight with my new storage!  Cruella has been annoying the alpacas today by staring at them through the fence and then turning her back on them when they come near.  She is very wary of the electric fence at the moment!



Next my favourite photo of Greeves with his Aunty Islay who he sticks very close to.  In fact, tonight he almost ate a little food and he is looking far better than he has done for months.  Dude is in the background.

I think he is saying, "I love you, Aunty Izzle!"

Not sure what he is saying in this next one!

 

My Mule has had new tyres all round today.  It has also had a new CV joint so it is now all singing and all dancing - and I am very pleased!  But I did forget to take a picture of it!  I did take one of George though - I like to think she is looking ready to lamb!