Easter-Wood Luther and Easter-Wood Zorro in their new home
Following our shearing in early May, another five of our herd, three girls and two boys will be off to their new home near Whitchurch, Hampshire. Sheila recently went over to visit their new owners and was most impressed with their farm. I am sure that they will be very happy there.
Here at home, we have had unexpected challenges in the shape of feline issues! Following the birth of two kittens to our farm cat, we now have the challenge of weaning them off their mother in addition to keeping the male cat, responsible for all of this in the first place, away from mum! Our plan is to get her "done" as we certainly don't want an additional litter..........breeding Alpacas is what we do not cats! However, keeping a very active female cat away from the local toms is not that easy either so after a great deal of thought, Sheila came up with the ingenious plan of using the Alpaca Wagon as a quarantine room! We plan to do this for just 10 days which apparently will allow time for the milk to dry up and prevent any further accidents until we are able to get her to the vets for the op!
We have separated our elite youngsters from the recently weaned cria and they are now enjoying fresh spring grass in their new paddock. With all of this rain recently, the grass is really taking off, so to speak! Mind you, with the freshly soaked paddocks, it makes the daily "poovering" very difficult and wet poo very quickly blocks the hose!! Talking of "poovering", I wondered if any of you who own one of the Trafalger machines, experience the same "gathering" of alpacas around the poover when using it in a paddock? I have decided that it is probably the frequency of sound emitted from the motor which to an alpaca may sound like "orgling"!! Who knows?
Following our visit to the Alpaca 2012 Show in Clevedon last week and talking to a few breeders, we have now agreed on our breeding programme for this year which will have a strong focus on further enhancing our elite herd. It was good to meet up with some old friends again, all of which thought the show venue to be excellent and furthermore, was very well organised.
We are now looking forward to a rapidly approaching Spring/Summer and whilst the long range weather forecast isn't particularly dry, I can't wait for the longer days ahead...................feels like more time available to get the jobs done!
I keep threatening more photo's on my blog and I simply must try to adhere to this promise, so over the next few days, I will be out to capture some, hopefully pleasing images!
Be back soon.
