A trip to Lyndhurst.

I will write a brief blog today as I have a huge workload but wanted to acknowledge yesterday's venture! Yesterday we went to Lyndhurst to attend the bTB talk by Gina Bromage. It was a real eye-opener as she covered so many issues surrounding bio-security and the quest to avoid contracting bTB. Gina gave a great deal of credit to Di Summers hard work in co-ordinating information and disseminating this to everybody expressing an interest along with managing the support group. It was good also to meet some of our friends again. We most certainly learnt a great deal from this talk and as a result, we shall be making a few modifications to our bio-security from now on.

Like many of you, we are now enjoying an incredibly warm day today, Gone is the snow and at long last, our alpacas have some grass to graze on! We are so much looking forward to the return of warmer and drier weather!

Well I must get off to feed the alpacas now but will be back soon.

Getting there!

Our program of rallying the tradesmen for our cabin build is progressing well and we have now had a number of in-depth meetings with the carpenter, electrician and plumber. This Sunday, we will be meeting the heating engineer who, we hope will be able to implement a solution for the wood burning stove to be connected to under-floor heating and domestic hot water. He has also suggested solar panels for the domestic hot water during the summer months but I am not sure that the capital outlay will be economical enough. In the longer term, it has to be the ideal solution but with our limited budget, I believe it will be a tad too expensive!

Turning to the weather once more, it looks as though we have seen the worst of it now and we are now basking in a relative "heat wave" of +6 degrees C!! I have to say, I am not sorry one little bit that the snow and ice is thawing! Our alpacas have been very cosy in their barn each night of late but they are certainly missing the warmth of the sun! (As we are!).

We have now finished off all of the haylage we initially brought and whilst it is treated as a "delicacy" for the alpacas, they would, I am sure eat only this and not hay. It is full of goodness but they can easily over-indulge on it so although we have ordered more, we will ration it in future!

The fox has not shown himself for a while now. The reason is of course that we have now locked the 3 remaining hens in the coop until I get the chance to build a run for them. Needless to say that the supply of eggs is seriously down but at least we still get 3 eggs a day and that will do for us o:)!

I am off to the bTB talk in Lyndhurst by Gina Bromage on Saturday and looking forward to what has been described as an extremely informative talk. Sadly, I will be leaving Sheila to farm sit but I am sure that she will get to another venue in the fullness of time.

Signing off now and will return soon.

Yet more snow!

The snow came thick and fast (10 inches so far) and it appears that the worst has yet to come but we are quite happy about the way life is treating us right now! Maybe it's the British "stiff upper lip" syndrome but we are quite enjoying the challenge. Our daily routine of feeding, watering, mucking out and letting the alpacas out for the day has taken a new meaning as we are now taking bets about which of the alpacas reaches the paddocks first! The same applies for when they make a dash for the barn when we bring them in for the evening!

I am quite surprised about how quickly they learn where to go......they have now developed an incredible homing attitude, knowing exactly which pen they came out of when leaving the barn in the morning. The exercise of thawing the water buckets and refilling them in this weather is a real challenge however it certainly keeps one fit!

I have posted a few photographs of the farm showing different paddocks. See if you can see any of the alpacas!

This is a view from the west of our farm

This view shows "Ice Cool Lad's" Paddock with our Barn in background

This shows our "wood" with a field shelter shared between two of the paddocks.

Here's our coloured group who have just been put out for the day.

Hope you enjoyed some of the Easter-Wood scenes.

Just when you thought things were improving?

Good evening folks. I shall only write a brief blog tonight as we are due to have a meal cooked by my Sister-in Law later so I will have to get a move on! Today however, was a reminder that one shouldn't get too complacent! We lost another 2 chickens today and I would love to get hold of the perpetrator of this crime! This damn fox has now dispatched 6 of our hens now, most of which were taken during daylight hours so we will have to build a chicken run and forget the idea of "free range" hens. Sad, as we were really enjoying their gentle clucking whilst wandering around the farm pecking at the ground and picking up the occasional grub/insect.

The weather continues to be below freezing for us here in Berkshire with us waking to frozen pipes yet again today! If it wasn't for our friendly neighbour, Patrick, we would have struggled with water during the day. As the weather has been forecast with a lot of snow this evening, we have now brought the alpacas into our barn again. Mind you, they seem to enjoy the race to the barn each time and a couple of them have established superiority as exceptional runners!

Signing off for now.

A welcome respite!

This morning, the second day of 2010, we woke to another clear, bright and sunny day.....see picture below! It's only the second time for many weeks that we have experienced the warmth of the sun even though the air temperature is hovering around zero. Today, after a second night in the barn, we brought out the alpacas again first thing this morning and they appeared to be absolutely delighted to feel the warmth of the sun again, even though the ground was rock hard. According to the weather forecast, we could be enjoying several days of dry, bright days....hurray!

The year ahead for us is full of promise and as we get closer to the day when our log cabin is to be built, which is only 5 weeks away, we are very enthusiastic about what the future holds for us. Despite the issues of bTB affecting our original plans to exhibit this year, we will most certainly be attending some local country and alpaca shows with the intention of simply raising our profile. Like a number of our colleagues, we are very optimistic about the future of alpaca breeding and since I have personally become much more involved in the day to day running of our business here at Easter-Wood since my IT recruitment company went bust early in 2009, I cannot help but believe in a successful outcome.

We have now received the list of venues for the Gina Bromage talks about bTB in Camelids and so we have booked our place for later this month. Dealt with in a sensible and responsible manner, I am convinced that most alpaca breeders will overcome what will be a somewhat testing time for all. Not only have we stopped any animal movement but we now have hand sanitizer dispensers located strategically around the farm. It may be a small thing but we feel it is an essential approach to improving bio security.

Finally, I have to report that we have not lost any more chickens this past week so perhaps our improved vigilance is paying off!

Signing off now but to those of you who read our blog, may we wish you a very Happy New Year.

Where did it all go?

Good morning all. Today was a reflection on the Christmas festivities and whilst we all had our challenges, the holiday break was most enjoyed. Our son bless him, treated us to a sumptuous meal on Christmas day and since Sheila had volunteered to drive, I had the opportunity to indulge in a couple of bevvies! The festivities also embraced the obligatory TV viewing and we had the luxurious "feet-up" experience which comes with every Christmas time.

Now of course, we are several days from the Christmas break and we don't know where the time went.....talking of disappearing acts; our resident "Reynard" despatched yet another two chickens again. We are now down from 9 to 5 chickens. Despite what they say about alpacas protecting sheep, chickens, etc,.......they don't!! We have had three taken from within the alpaca paddocks and all within spitting distance from them. I have resigned nyself to building a "run" so they will have to forego the experience of being free range but at least they will be safe!

We are currently spending a fair amount of time sourcing tradesmen for the cabin build and whilst this has become a priority, we are still battling with the inclement weather which poses the constant quetion of "do we bring in the alpacas tonight or not"? The snow has almost disappeared from the paddocks now but in it's place, we are having a fair amount of rain and the poor alpacas really look sorry for themselves having now to "weather" the rain and mud after the snow!

Well I am off to do a bit of poo picking inside the barn now.

Winter challenges!

Good morning all and may we wish you festive greetings!

Things have been a little challenging for us here at Easter-Wood just lately as we have suffered the fate of frozen water pipes, loosing another two hens and struggling to keep warm......We are however still very bouyant as the temporary "living in a caravan" will soon come to an end and our Log Cabin will occupy the space of our static in February. Another "Cold" view of our farm below.

We are still bringing in our alpacas at night during this cold and snowy weather and it is very satisfying to almost hear their sigh of relief upon entering the barn! The frozen pipes however are not just resigned to the static, our two exterior taps on the barns are equally prone to freezing up and we have to be inventive to ensure that our alpacas get their water.

Since the loss of our last chicken (we are now down to 6), we experienced a strange thing this morning.........upon letting them out of their coop, we collected 8 eggs!! We are certain that there were none in the nesting boxes when we put them away last night so we either have chickens laying more than 1 egg or maybe the "lost" chickens are coming back to lay their eggs in the coop before wandering off again.......strange!!

Over the last few months we had received emails from Dianne Summers alerting us all about the bTB disease in alpacas and this has now been supported by BAS who have advised us to attend the bTB meetings that Gina Bromage will be talking at. Easter-Wood will certainly be attending the nearest venue in January next year.