Drainage issues, Husbandry and the Build!

The rain hasn't ceased throughout the week and into this weekend apart from a brief respite during Saturday. Our ditches which surround our farm are beginning to steadily fill which is a cause for some concern. Both the north and south ditches actually merge in one corner of the farm and then are supposed to drain out into one of the abundant streams that criss-cross this part of the countryside however, a large supplier of aggregates and cement are currently excavating shingle from the land almost adjacent to our farm. In their wisdom, they decided to install a very small pipe to take this water under a road that they have built for their earth moving trucks and as aresult, have considerably reduced the flow of water from our ditches. Needless to say, I have spoken to their team and I expect to see them installing a larger pipe! We will see if this happens as we do not wish to see our alpacas knee deep in water!

During the brief respite from the rain yesterday, we managed to vaccinate our elite herd with Dectomax and release them from their 3 day break in the comfort of the barn. We did however conduct a couple of spit-offs first. Olympus has had some trouble in getting pregnant and we mated her again with Cambridge Ice Cool Lad and gave her a dose of Receptal this time which we hope will get her "going".

Once the elite alpacas had left the comfort of the barn, we then moved the rest of the herd, minus the weanlings into the barn for their relief from the foul weather. They too will receive their Dectomax jabs this coming week and then it is the turn of the weanlings.

Yesterday morning, we met up with our builder who will be responsible for the internal fitting out of the Cabin build and chatted about the various options open to us. As we have seen the strengthening of the Euro against the pound over the last 18 months, we have been forced to work with a Canadian Log Cabin company now who will build our log cabin to the same spec as the other company. We are so looking forward to work commencing within the next couple of months.

Well it is almost time to brave the weather once more and feed the alpacas so I bid you farewell and will return soon.