Welcome Jed!

Today has been another day to welcome a visitor to Westhill.  We set off at  6am in order to catch the ferry from Southampton - a cruise was involved for this visitor!

We were heading to Warrenfield Alpacas on the Isle of White - home of Mike and Sandra, and their alpacas of course.  They had laid on rather a lot of spectacular entertainment for us - "wild ducks" that waddled along after Mike as if he was Mummy Duck, cameras linked to a bird box where a nest of Blue Tits had hatched, a group of female alpacas bearing down on a basking fox amidst much screeching, various mechanical things to captivate Carl, much fleece rummaging of lovely young girls, an exceedingly good fig tree (keep the roots contained to get a good crop) and, possibly my favourite (apart from the alpacas), a moving television - brilliant!

However, the real purpose of our visit to Warrenfield was Warrenfield Jed.  Jed was coming to stay for a while for one or two romantic interludes.  We have Harry, a black, but he is not ready to work quite yet and I have three young girls who are crying out for a young black boy - so Sandra has come to the rescue with Jed!  He is a gorgeous boy with a lovely temperament and walks very well on his halter - I have warned Sandra that Harry also walked beautifully on his halter when he arrived - not quite so good now!

Jed had to travel on his own and cope with a ferry trip but as soon as he was on the ferry he settled down and was great all the way back.  We had a 20 minute wait for the ferry - despite driving super slow back to the terminal and creating a superior traffic back log.  Once at the terminal Jed moaned a bit and peered wistfully out of the back which caused great amusement to the holiday makers who swiftly got their camera phones out!  Carl and I attempted to look nonchalant whilst leafing through the colour supplements and hoping he would lie down.

No problems after that and when we arrived he had his halter on and walked out of the trailer and off down the track very happily.  Then the girls spotted him and charged over with Prue and Emily leading the way.  Zara insisted on showing him her bottom and bucking and rearing around in circles in an exceedingly flighty way - but she has a different lover waiting in the wings!

 The young boys were also keen to say hello and were very disappointed when he didn't come to join them.  Dude, however, was definitely not best pleased.  He did much rearing, sniffing the air and posing - finally alternating retreating to the top of the hill where he could keep an eye on his every move and charging down the bottom to check he wasn't intruding on his space!.

I have been sitting in the Mule making sure he settles and, finally, after lots of air sniffing and pacing he is grazing - although he hits the deck pretty quick whenever it rains - which it has been, torrential, on and off since we returned.  The photos of him are not that good as he is a bit muddy and the trailer got drenched on the way there - I will do better when the sun comes out.


I was a bit worried, with all the rain, about the sheared alpacas but they are very sensible - at the first spots there is a mad dash - led by Cassie in the girls paddock and Spike in the boys paddock for the shelters and they all cram in - except Harry who hasn't been sheared!


Finally, whilst in the Mule, I photographed these two, no idea what they are but I include them as Geoff has a lot of pretty birds on his blog tonight!!

Jayne has landed!

It has been a great day today!  This morning Mr Owl flew over bearing with him - Jayne from Zanzibar!  We have seen Jayne on her home territory several times but this was the first visit of Jayne to Westhill.  After a nice cup of tea we paid a visit to the sheep where Jayne fed Nonlimpit and I surepticiously sat on Two Tone to stop her having a rub on Jayne's back - not a pleasant experience when you are kneeling down as she tends to knock you over.  We then had a cuddle of Greeves and fed a bit of carrot to Bert and Flem, the others kept their distance a bit as I think their minds are more on their pregnancies.  In fact Jayne said she saw Flem's baby move - and I think I did to.  We had tour of the grounds and then a spot of lunch - the salmon quiche was delicious and very little was left (more on that later), the honey ring swiftly turned into a horseshoe but the fruit cake was left until tea time.

Then back to look at the boys and some of the fleece from this year's shearing - did make me seriously think about the future of one of them!  I fear Spike's lump is getting worse and the vet will be needed next week.  I have to say that when we opened Harry's flece even I was impressed with the colour - what I would call a real blue black and nice and long.  Dylan's undercarriage impressed - as usual!

We then got the other girl's down and I left Lina until last as I feared a spit explosion but she managed to restrain herself nicely.  Emily I was quite impressed with, I am toying with a black mating for her (more on that tomorrow).  Lily, of course, I am always proud to show off - whether people want to see her or not!  But by this time I feared Jayne might be becoming a little tired of alpaca viewing so we returned to the house for fruit cake.  Carl had now returned so it was more chat and then a trip over to see Dude.  Dude is a little frisky at the moment and spends a lot of his time sniffing the air - I think he wants girls - so Carl and Sam cornered him with the rope so Jayne could have a look.

Hope you had a good day Jayne, it was a tremendous honour to have a visit and be able to show you our herd!

When we took Jayne back to Wellground we managed a sneaky look at a  cria.  That is a little gem for a lucky new owner (I think it's Donna - congratualtions!).

And now we have RAIN!!  With a bit of thunder and lightining!  We still have a livestock trailer to prepare though as we have another visitor tomorrow - more news soon.

Oh - and the quiche - I asked Sam to put the rest in the kitchen while we returned Jayne - he did but did not cover it and I returned to find Smudge on the worktop with a great chunk in his mouth - purring!!

And - if there are any spelling mistakes - I am sorry, the spell check does not work and time is getting on!

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!

Mutter, mutter, mutter . . .

Today has not been a good day.  Animals all fine - except a sore udder on one ewe - Sam and Carl fine.  Just a bad day and I lost the plot a little just now - in fact the gremlin within came out in such force just now that Sam is still trembling.  Never mind, onwards and upwards.  Got to clean the house now and then off to Mother's for dinner.  Miserable little apology for a blog that - and no pictures!

Today's Tip: If windy - don't shear!!

Little electric fencing event this morning.  SOMEONE forgot to turn off the alpacas' electric fencing when they checked the sheep first thing.  After I had fed the lambs I started to get the gates open to the run so we could get the boys sheared.  I unhooked the electric fence, thinking I could hear that tick tick noise but didn't get a shock so assumed my hearing was going.  I hooked the wire over the - metal - gate and holding the gate with one hand gathered up the - metal - catch with the other.  The boys were obediently trotting down towards me as a huge jolt hit me!  I screeched, the boys scarpered - Carl and Sam laughed!  That really hurt!  Carl, in between tears of laughter, informed me that I hadn't felt it when I unhooked as it is on a pulse - whatever that might mean.

All shearing set up, boys down - and the wind started to really get up.  No rain though so we had to just get on with it.  Time is limited and next weekend is out, so is the following as we are shearing then - in fact if we didn't do the boys today it looked like July was the next free date!  Shearing with the wind blowing is not good - there were  several shouts of "Catch that blanket!"  Rather than the more usual, "Blanket" - as we rush for the red bucket!  Well, they are done but some fleece is making it's way towards Turnworth.  One very useful discovery I did make is that the Poo Collector is an excellent devise for collecting up the stray stuff at the end of shearing (as long as you remember to clean the filter afterwards).  Sadly, due to Carl and work, we have to shear in several batches - so much easier if we could do all whites at one time, then  all brown and so on - one day!
None of the boys would then pose properly for a photograph so this is the best I could do - Here is Dylan who was the biggest baby to date and cried and shrieked the whole way through.  Carl was a bit wary of doing his rear end anyway as he has the most enormous pair of balls you have ever seen!  I think Dylan was a little scared of the clippers round there as well!

And here is little Barnaby Rudge who was the most perfectly behaved, despite it being the first time he has been sheared.  He looks totally different now, shame I couldn't get his face.