Sunday 28 August 2011

A Chairman girl!

Welcome to our latest cria;...... A beautiful female cria out of Cambridge The Chairman of ACC whom we have named Easter-Wood Adelle:

Easter-Wood Adelle finding Metisha's "milk bar"

She was  born on Saturday morning and since Metisha was a maiden, it was not an easy delivery. She was clearly struggling during her labour and in the end, she simply gave up trying, finally deciding to lie down at which point we helped her deliver. We sprayed her navel and checked her weight and all this time Metisha just lay there trying to figure out what was happening. I then carried her cria and placed her in front of Metisha's nose. She seemed a littled startled by the fact that this little pure white bundle was doing her best to get to her feet. After a while, she realised that she should be doing her bit and so up she got and within 20 minutes, both mum and baby were bonding well and subsequently, she found the milk bar. Adelle came into this world at 8kgs and although we are a tad biased, we are very pleased with her along with her excellent pedigree.

Easter-Wood Adelle
Just showing off now!!

Today, our two new elite crias have been introduced and they have spent the best part of this morning running around together. Both Adelle and Aramis, who is now 2 months old and an Accoyo Remarque boy, seem to be enjoying each others company. Here they are together:

Adelle and Aramis

Will be back soon.

Sunday 14 August 2011

Two more births and an Alpaca Experience Day

We have had an interesting few days just lately with two boys arriving in fairly quick succession. The first was a lovely light brown boy with a beautiful phenotype and weighing in at a healthy 8.9kgs. His mum is Blackie who is quite frankly, getting on in years but she certainly knows how to produce wonderful cria and this year decided to pop him out at 7:20am!! Her cria last year was a beautiful girl Truffle, whom we sold just a few months ago. Whilst her cria this year has yet to be named, we are in no doubt that he will soon attract interest.

Our unamed boy

Last Friday, at 1.00 pm, Marmite delivered a medium brown boy with very interesting white markings. This is the first time we have had one of Ice Cool Lad's cria producing a non-solid colour however the markings are quite distinctive and as can be seen in the picture, his name of Zorro is probably quite appropriate!

Zorro weighs in at 8.1kgs

Today was this months Alpaca Experience Day for us which has so far proved to be very popular. We had a smaller turnout than usual however as we had two postponements but it was, nonetheless a most enjoyable day and we were blessed with good weather. Here are a couple pics from the day:




Will be back soon.

Sunday 7 August 2011

And along comes the seventh!

An absence from blogging during the last few weeks is down to a rather pressing care issue with my father whom I mentioned in my last blog, as he had undergone some major heart surgery followed by a lengthy stay in hospital. This was, I am afraid to say compounded by the intervention of well-meaning "friends" and it was necessary for both my sister and I to put a care package in place for him...........it's a long drawn out story which I won't go into as this is as far away from alpacas as you can get!!

Anyway, back at Easter-Wood, we have now had our seventh cria all within a 3 week period....here are some of them:
Arabella and Philby, who is on the right

This is Boniface

Chester with mum, Lai Lai

This pictures shows Layla with her mum, Torn Ear and Boniface on the right

This is Arabella having a snooze with mum, Fedora

Our swallows this year have taken to nesting in the same spot as last year, namely the rafters within the stable block and the other morning I had a need to go into one of the stables which is no longer in use, and there upon the ground was a young swallow. He couldn't yet fly but had managed to climb out of his nest and had dropped rather ungainly to the floor. Poor little blighter was clearly distressed, so I scooped him up and placed him back in the nest along with his brothers and sisters. Two days later however, they were all gone so I guess they were due to fly the nest anyway.

We had a visit from a lovely couple from Holland last week who are over here on holiday and following a call from my son's in laws who know them from their camping connections, they came to look at our alpaca farm and went away with a bag of fleece from one of our boys. It was a nice afternoon and it was great to see their delight when showing them our most friendly girls who insisted on nibbling their clothing. 

Will be back again soon.