Pastures new.

I apologise for not blogging here at Easter-Wood of late. There is really no excuse and I feel quite guilty so I will just crack on with some of our news, first of which is the departure of  two of our boys to their new home in Petersfield a couple of weeks ago.

 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.

Our loss tonight!

It is with a heavy heart that I write this blog tonight! We lost a very handsome little white male born to our first born here at Easter-Wood. Poppy went the full term and at 4:40pm this afternoon, she delivered this little boy following a difficult and lengthy birth. Phase 1 of her labour went on for too long and so we assisted in the delivery. He was very small and he was clearly fatigued from his ordeal. Anyway, we kept him warm and fitted a cria coat, gave him a feed which he seemed to readily accept and placed him alongside mum in the barn. At 8pm this evening, we planned to give him a further feed but it became evident that he was slowly slipping away and sadly died at 8:20 this evening. Poor Poppy cannot understand what has happened and I can't tell you how much it has effected all of us however, someone once said that when one keeps livestock, one should be prepared to accept dead stock! Difficult though, as I am sure that everyone who has experienced this will know!

Will sign off for now.

British Alpaca Futurity

With the securing of our permanent planning consent (as notified by Sue Wilson at Valley Alpacas) last  Wednesday, we are now busy booking our events and shows for the remainder of this year. Whilst we had decided not to show at the British Alpaca Futurity, we did attend today's session and met up with many of our friends and fellow breeders along with meeting new ones. These events are invaluable for us, least of which is to gain knowledge on the competition but also to acknowledge the level of professionalism demonstrated at these sort of events in the Alpaca calender. As you can guess, we are poised to take our first steps onto the show circuit and whilst we have been otherwise engaged over the last three and half years in establishing and developing our business, we are now enthusiastically shaping our long term strategy and plans so that we too, will be regular attendees at the various shows planned. Our visit to The British Alpaca Futurity today was as always, inspiring and we also identified some awesome Studs which we are keen to use on our girls later this year.

Despite the promise of Spring just around the corner, Sheila is still having success in selling many of her Winter garments that she has knitted during the last few months. I keep meaning to photograph and insert them onto our on-line shop but no sooner that I arrange for our daughter, Gemma to model the Snoods, Hats, Scarfs and Gloves, the garments disappear out the door! Still, can't complain really.

Getting back to the start of this blog, we are really pleased and excited at the outcome of our planning application and for those of you who are currently waiting for the outcome of their application, don't lose sight of the passion and determination that took you there in the first place. Common sense usually prevails!

On that note, I will close but will be back soon.

A Change is as good as a rest!!

In the corporate world from whence I come from, I always subscribed to changes in business practices in terms of process, sales and marketing and thus I believe it is true for our world too. However, I also believe that managing change is the key to success and as a result of a great deal of planning, we have now decided to sell Cambridge Ice Cool Lad. He will be much missed as he has produced some exemplary off spring for us but it is important for us to inject fresh genetics into our herd. In fairness, we started this process last year when we were fortunate enough to have Eringa Park Lawbreaker of Cambridge and Cambridge The Chairman of ACC's genetics through matings with a three of our elite girls. As a result we now have another two very promising boys as future herd sires in Easter-Wood Lawbreaker's Legend and Easter-Wood Athos. The third cria, a beautiful girl (Easter-Wood Adelle) went to our friends in Cumbria, Beck Brow Alpacas. In the meantime, we have however been looking forward to getting Easter-Wood Diego (a beautiful Cambridge Samson boy) ready for "service" which will take place this summer. He is a stunning boy exhibiting dense, highly crimped fleece with fabulous brightness and we are excited about his potential.

Easter-Wood Diego in "deep thought"

A young Easter-Wood Diego

This week saw the weaning of 9 of our youngsters which, as ever is a tough call and despite the strengthening of fences, we still had a couple of escapees. Their pitiful "bleeting" always tugs at my heart but of course it has to be done! I didn't mention this in my last blog but we also had a couple of births at Easter-Wood last week......two kittens! Mum, is our farm cat whom we purchased as a ginger Tom some two years ago!! Anyway they are all doing well and whilst I haven't managed to get a good picture of them yet, I can show you a pretty poor phone camera image of one of them at a day old.

No name yet, not even sure of it's sex!

We have some visitors coming this morning, (potential breeders, we hope) so will now sign off but will be back soon.

Is it March already??

So much has happened since the last time I blogged (got to be 2 months or more – shameful!). As ever, we have been busy getting the farm into shape after a winter which, to be fair, hasn’t been that bad but we have been trying to retain as much of our pasture as possible and for some reason this year, we haven’t been able to hold onto much of it. Our Elite cria are all developing nicely and we will certainly be present at some of the later shows this year. Sales of the garments Sheila has been busy producing have taken off really well and continues to be a regular source of interest/income from our clients.

As readers of our blog will recall, part of our “Alpaca Experience Days” offer the chance for our visitors to also “Experience” our Kune Kune pigs. Well, they are no longer tiny, sweet little piglets they were last year! They have grown significantly over the last couple of months and whilst they are never going to reach massive proportions, they are now quite a handful at meal times!!

Another event that I am pleased to report and one that is only due to the lack of light pollution here, is the passing directly overhead of the ISS (International Space Station) last month. Fortunately it was a cloudless night and not only did we get a great view of Venus, Jupiter and a new moon all in line, but the ISS suddenly came into view to round off the spectacle! As you may have guessed, I am hooked on astronomy and it has been one of my passions since childhood some 10 years ago!!!!

We have also been actively marketing the business here at Easter-Wood and another opportunity to compliment my previous radio interview experience with a local radio station last year, was to host BBC Radio Berkshire this morning. Nikki Whiteman was our guest and she fronted the interview for the Andrew Peach show. Both Sheila and I thoroughly enjoyed the session even though we had to endure a heavy mist all morning. Anyway, Nikki will be returning during the summer months along with her family this time.

 Sheila & Radio Berkshire presenter, Nikki Whiteman

Signing off for now but will return soon.

A period of absence explained

My blog has, I'm afraid been somewhat in-active during the last couple of months and for this I can only apologize. Plenty has been going on here at Easter-Wood and what with winter preparation, Christmas plans and garment production, I just simply ran out of time! For those of you who are well disciplined in regularly blogging, I can only take my hat of to you in admiration. I wish I had that kind of well organized approach.

Woke up to a crisp, cold morning today and what a welcome this is from the ever present "mud" we have endured over the last couple of weeks! Taking a leaf out of other breeders blogs, I have decided to ensure that all photos of our alpacas are limited to head and shoulder shots in future however, this approach will commence with the next blog as I haven't yet captured any worthwhile pictures.

In a way to reduce the effect of the mud on our alpacas, we have now re-organized our paddocks access so that most of them are now able to wander in and out of the barn thus reducing the "poaching" effect on the fields and giving them a warmer, drier place to sleep/eat. We also find it far more practical when administering their injections and routine husbandry. I have to say that this design was in part due to some outright plagiarism (thanks Barbara & Paul)!!

On the subject of husbandry, we had an excellent day at our local vets earlier this month. They put on a husbandry class for alpacas which covered just about as much as one can fit into a day's session. It was, to say the least, exemplary and we both came away feeling that we had learnt so much in such a short space of time. Anyway, well done Larkmead Veterinary Group.

Whilst paddock cleaning is such a back breaking exercise when the weather is so wet ( on the basis that it's impossible to get the "poover" out), I am now so much happier that the cold weather has hardened up everything such that alpaca poo can now easily be removed using a simple rake and scoop! On that note, I will take my leave of you and promise to return soon (with photo's)!

A weekend away

Saturday was the day that we moved Easter-Wood Metisha and Easter-Wood Adelle to their new home in Cumbria. An early morning start was the order of the day as we were faced with a 300 mile trip and to make matters worse, I had come down with the dreaded "man-flu" and as we all know, this is indeed a serious illness for us men folk!

However, all went well with the move. Metisha wasn't too keen to make her way into the van even though I carried Adelle in first but once in, they seem to settle down nicely. This was the first trip in the van for us and we were pleased with the ride, etc. The on-board CCTV camera to view the animals was a real bonus and we could at least check on mum and cria at regular intervals during the journey.

We were pleased that the weather was good and upon arriving in Cumbria, we were soon greeted with a magnificant sight of the hills/mountains which heralded our introduction to the Lake District. After a slight hicup with the Sat Nav, we soon arrived at Beck Brow Alpacas of Cumbria. What a wonderful, idylic place that Barbara and Paul have. This farm, at the heart of which is a charming old farm house simply oozed character and of course fields full of alpacas graced the scene.

Obviously the first thing for us to do was to unload Metisha and Adelle who were led into a unique, well planned series of pens all of which was covered and enabled the alpacas to be seperated into their various groups. Both Sheila and I were well impressed with this arrangement and I hope that we may be forgiven for a bit of plagiarism in the future!

We were made to feel most welcome and following a lovely meal at their local Fox & Pheasant, we stayed overnight and despite my cold getting worse, I managed to get a reasonable nights sleep. Problem was, I ran out of tissues so Barbara, very kindly sent me on my way the following morning with a couple of loo rolls but not until we had had a good look at their alpacas. Barbara and Paul have some very special animals there and with their attention to detail, we came away with the knowledge that both Metisha and Adelle will be well cared for! During our stay however, Sheila was particularly taken with Velvet, one of their little dogs and as can be seen from the photo, she has a tight hold on her (several attempts at sneaking her into the van was made of course)!

Sheila is determined to smuggle Velvet away!!

We eventually arrived back home at 8:30pm last night and pleased to say, without a hitch. Thanks to both of you for a most enjoyable but brief weekend.