A slight panic!!

Whilst I was conducting my daily feeding regime along with the routine herd inspection last night, I noticed that we had two seperate groups of our Aussies, each appearing to cast a cautious eye on one another! I found this behaviour somewhat baffling, so with the evening light beginning to rapidly fade, I approached the group who were particularly busy feeding from the new hay feeder we purchased the other week. I then saw what the alpacas were alarmed at..................one of the girls had an adorment around her neck which was not initially visible in the twilight....................a bucket was hanging around Memory's neck like an over-sized medallion!

I had been using water buckets, hanging from fence posts which had always been a convenient means of providing water as we do not currently have it piped for some of the paddocks! Anyway, we quickly rounded them up onto the adjacent track and managed to remove the offending item from the poor girl's neck.The next trip to our farm supplier will mean purchasing some additional water troughs! It just goes to show how important it is to always observe your Alpacas on a regular basis as I shudder to think what damage it could have done if I hadn't spotted the problem!!

Sheila has been busy labouring over the production of garments each day and with the sound of clicking needles ringing throughout the Easter household, I have found solace in immersing myself in designing and installing our modified CCTV security system! It works a treat even though it intitially had a habit of recording every movement from a busy spider creating it's web across the field of view!!!

This past week has seen a lot of husbandry work including vitamins ADE injections for the crias, toenail cutting, spit offs and three matings. The collapsing barn solution has commenced with the delivery and installation of accro props which will be followed up with the replacement of trusses and supporting timbers during October. At least with the accro's in place, we will not have to fear the roof falling in!!

With the recent Autumnal weather decending on Berkshire, we have had a fair bit of rain of late which always brings up the worm casts on our fields; the result of which is a bunch of very muddy Alpacas who seem to delight in covering themselves in this unsightly mess!! I am in awe of all those breeders who manage to have only "clean" Alpacas. How do you do it??

Sheila will be making her way to the Natural Fibre Company in Cornwall on Friday to deliver some fleeces for processing and as the garment production line is in full swing here at Easter-Wood, she is rapidly running out of yarn! This trip actually coincides with a visit to her mother who lives in Tavistock so it is a fairly short hop to Launceston.

Well, the rain is upon us again today and I have just discovered that The Ryder Cup is only shown on Sky Sports channel, which we don't have so that makes me a very unhappy chappy!!!  :0((