Some Easter-Wood pics

With a promise of some pics in my last blog, I grabbed the camera yesterday afternoon and took a few around the farm of which these are a sample;

 

This is Memory in the forground with Metisha looking on.

This line up shows from left to right: Sundown, Diego and Latte (sadly, I seem to have cut off Sundown's nose!)

This is a typical Diego pose!

From left to right: Leia, Memory and Metisha

None of this group were interested in posing at all!!

Some of you may remember that we have about a 1/3 acre of woodland at the lower part of the farm and as an added attraction on our open days, we decided to introduce a couple of pigs in there and so having completed the fencing of the enclosure and the ark, we placed the Kune Kune's into their new home last week. The woodland area is ideal for them as they can forage on all of the nettles, grass, weeds and roots that are abundant in there. Whilst the foliage is still a little sparse, the Alpacas can see them and as mentioned before, often kick up a fuss when the pigs waddle into view however the wood becomes very dense in the summer and will then render them invisible to the girls!

The one on the left is Matilda and the sandy coloured one is Stella!!

 Will be back soon.

Spring cleaning.

What with this exemplary weather and the need to "spruce up" the place, we have been actively planting new shrubs and flowers in the newly constructed "planters" around the farm including the obligatory veggie patch. We have been without home grown vegetables for a couple of years now so I thought it high time to address this!

We have now seperated out our pregnant elite girls so that they have quite a large paddock to themselves with plenty of spring grass. Within only a few days, they are looking decidedly "rotund" however that could be also due to their fleece which has really "fluffed" up since the sun has removed the moisture. The weather has also created a significant "spurt" of grass growth and as a result, all of the paddocks are looking really good now.

The installation of the Kune Kune pigs within the woods at the bottom of the farm has created a source of evil intent as far as the alpacas are concerned!! Every time one of the pigs walks into view, a chorus of shrieks and screams are immediately emitted from our alpacas who quite obviously believe that the little chubby creatures will soon be wreaking carnage amongst them!!

We had an exceptional weekend at the Berkshire College of Agriculture's open weekend last week and whilst Sheila took along some sample garments simply to show what can be done with Alpaca fleece, they soon became "must have" items. Gloves, hats, snoods,etc all soon went! As last year, the event was a great weekend and we were very pleased with the outcome.

One of the jobs that I have been promising myself for a while now is the total clean out of the barn which has housed the girls on a number of nights during the winter months. Yesterday, we manged to remove all of the stale straw ready for a good jet wash later this week, a job which undoubtably will be somewhat messy!!

I am conscious that there are no pictures with this short blog but as the weather continues to be good, I promise to capture some images of the Easter-Wood herd for the next blog.

Have a good weekend and will be back soon.

Spring seems to have sprung!

Such beautiful weather we have had again today, so much so that I spent most of today in shirt sleeves!! With the good weather, we have been able to clean the paddocks without the "poover" getting clogged with mud and it also seems that the grass is beginning to grow again (at last). As the area of grass around the cabin usually gets it's treatment from the sit-on mower, Sheila suggested that we let our alpacas do the job instead, so suitably fencing off any escape route, we herded them through the barn and onto the track. What a terrific job they did and furthermore, they were treated to some lush grass in the process!

The "Pretty Lawnmowers" at work.

Having now finished the pig enclosure (complete with electric fencing), we will be collecting the pair of Kune Kune's next week so our farm will have this added attraction for our Experience Days. These seem to be very popular and since we are running one each month throughout the summer, we are fully booked for April. We hope that with more and more people expressing this kind of interest in alpacas, many will be inclined to embark upon alpaca breeding themselves.

Just a short blog tonight as I have just noticed the time!! Be back again soon.

Return of old friends

Celebrating the Spring Equinox with another fine day, we had another busy session working on the pig enclosure which has now been complimented with a finished pig ark and stock fencing. The final job will be the installation of an electric wire positioned low to the ground which should dissuade the piglets trying to burrow under the fencing and will hopefully put off any attempts of foxes and rabbits doing likewise! Early next week, we will be heading to Alton to collect the Kune Kune's from Tom and Sarah at Mill Cottage Farm Experience.

Today, we were delighted to welcome back Gemma and Andrew to Easter-Wood for them to select their alpacas who will make up their core herd. Their selection are four females: Easter-Wood Pandora, Easter-Wood Cadbury, Easter-Wood Truffle, Easter-Wood Moon Dance and their potential herd Sire, Easter-Wood Sundown. They are extremely passionate and enthusiastic about the forthcoming project of setting up their alpaca breeding business and we are so pleased for them. They are a lovely couple and with their comittment, passion and energy, we are very confident that they will add significant value to the Alpaca Breeding world.

Having just seen the forthcoming weather forecast for the week on Countryfile, we will be very actively getting all of the paddocks cleaned and looking pristine again after the wet and wild weather we have endured during the last few weeks (having said that, Countryfile also reported that the month of March in the UK experienced a lower rainfall than average!!).

I will close for tonight but will return again soon.

The rain arrives!!

Woke up this morning to a damp and now, very wet day!! This will certainly encourage grass growth whilst dampening our spirits but I guess it is for the good!

We had our vet, Graham out yesterday to lance an abscess on Black Magic so we will be having to treat her for about a month, flushing out the wound and administering a course of antibiotics. Interestingly, this abscess must of developed within a day or two since it wasn't evident on Monday of this week. It just goes to show that one must be consantly vigilant!! Whilst he was here, he also scanned three of our elite girls who had been mated to Eringa Park Lawbreaker of EPC, Cambridge The Chairman of ACC and EP Cambridge Strike Gold respectively and all are very pregnant so we are really looking forward to their births later this year. Our birthing programme for this year has been designed to embrace a wider, elite focus whilst at the same time further developing our secondry herd which has been, so far successful with Cambridge Ice Cool Lad providing excellent progeny.

Since we decided to house a couple of Kune Kune pigs within the woods at the bottom of our farm, I have been trying to get the enclosure and pig ark built in time for the Kune Kune's to be collected in a weeks time. It is hoped that these little creatures will be an added attraction for our visitors to Easter-Wood during the summer months.

Well it is still raining but there are jobs to do outside so will sign off now and will be back again soon.

The Futurity and Halter training

Whilst a strong supporter of Blogging, I seem to be making my trips to the Blogger dashboard more and more infrequent these days!! I guess what with so many different projects on the go and my inability to multi-task, it could be something to do with it!!

We had a great day out catching up with our old friends at the British Alpaca Futurity yesterday. The show looked well presented and of course the Alpacas were of the highest quality. We came away with a few purchases, namely a new weighing scale and harness along with some replacement feed buckets but the object that most took Sheila's fancy was a beautiful sculpture of Alpacas expertly crafted by a leading artist in the field of animal sculpture. Whilst she was in deep conversation with the afore-mentioned artist, I caught up with Chris Moor from Alpaca Seller on the trade stand next door to discuss, amongst other things, the new projects that he is currently addressing.

We had a busy time last weekend when, along with a couple who will be sourcing their starter herd from us, we had a halter training session with three of our boys followed by an update of Lambivac injections for some of them. We had a good day with Gemma and Andrew and they are so looking forward to starting their own Alpaca breeding enterprise.

Another extremely worthwhile exercise we managed  to complete recently was the final removal of the accumulated off-cuts of wood and general rubbish left over from the cabin build!! It was a real eyesore but couldn't be removed until the weather dried up a bit. Thank goodness it has finally gone!!

One of the projects that we have had planned for some time is the installation of some planting beds around the farm. We have always believed that a well-presented and tidy farm instills confidence in visitors and taking a leaf out of some of  our fellow breeders, I have now built a number of "planters" around the cabin and barn in which we will be planting shrubs, flowers and vegetables (yes, vegetables).

The weather appears to be a little overcast today but I guess we shouldn't grumble as we have been blessed with at least a week of sunny and/or bright days.

The jobs are now calling, so I shall close for today and will be back soon but will include some photo's with my next blog.

A chance to fleece rummage!

As I have noticed that surprisingly, another month has passed since I last updated our blog, I now put pen to paper (so to speak) to rectify what is an embarrassing period of silence!

Much of January has been designated as routine husbandry work but it also gave us an opportunity to take a detailed inspection of our youngsters fleeces. I have got to say that with the birthing success last year using Cambridge Ice Cool Lad, he has surpassed himself once more with the quality of some of the fleeces on the youngsters being absolutely superb! He is still very capable of delivering the great genetics he was always famous for!

This is Easter-Wood Latte's fleece at 6 months

Here is the little fella....a real beauty!

So this last month we have completed the A,D & E injections, administered the Lambivac and Dectomax throughout the herd and completed the toe nail trimming, albeit with a somewhat high degree of resistance!! Some of the pacas have taken to simply "kushing" when they spot me with the trimmers and trying to manoeuvre an 80kg adult so that I can gain access to their toes is a tad difficult to say the least!

Today, I have promised to install some additional perimeter fencing so I am now off to let the girls out of the barn before turning my hands to that. I will return again soon.