Another arrival!

We have now had another Cambridge Ice Cool Lad cria. We decided to call her "Truffle" as she has the most beautiful caramel-coloured fleece. I guess that this is the White on Black mating!

At 10:00 am yesterday, "Truffle" was born and within 15 minutes was standing and a further 10 minutes later, saw her feeding on the milk bar, much to our relief! She has inherited the most striking facial characteristics of Ice Cool Lad as has the previous cria born to Marmite two weeks ago. She is an absolute stunner and Sheila and I are very pleased that Ice Cool Lad has been successful in producing excellent progeny for us so far.

Truffle's first "go" at the milk bar!

Being "sussed" out 

The colouring of her fleece in sharp contrast to a Medium Brown!

The youngsters have now all experienced their first rain last night and whilst the Sun has disappeared for a while, we certainly need the water for the grass.

I will finish on a rather bizarre note...................our farm cat, who is probably the size of a young rabbit, decided to switch from hunting mice to rabbit and was caught sight running off to the barn with a young rabbit in her jaws. Before she could reach it however, the rabbit put in a final desperate attempt at escape and managed to get away and promptly ran into the nearest paddock, only to be chased by about 10 Alpacas!!.... It survived and I extracted it out of some thick grass and let her go in an adjacent field.

Be back soon

Getting there..........

Following the "build completion" of the cabin, it was time to rid ourselves of the wood waste that had accumulated since the start and so with a focused determination, we eagerly loaded up our trailer with wood off-cuts and unwanted pallets and ferried them down to the bottom paddock where we had a bonfire to rival the largest built on Novembver 5th! It was most rewarding and thoroughly cleaned up the appearence around the cabin.

Looks so much tidier!

Whilst out with the camera, I thought I would take a couple more pictures of the youngsters.

 Here is one of Leia who is from Wellground Close Encounter

Leia looking particularly "cute"

Here is a full face shot of Samson's Diego from EP Cambridge Samson

We are currently still awaiting a cria from Blackie who is now a week overdue and every day seems to add a further pound or two from her appearence and during the month of June, we are expecting another 5! With the fine weather we are experiencing though, the Alpacas are really enjoying both the lush grass and the abundance of vitamin D!

Will be back soon.

Welcome to the new world!!

Our Yuralee Daisy of Cambridge produced a lovely female this morning out of Wellground Close Encounter. No sooner had she found her rock-steady legs (within the hour), she was on the milk bar and feeding as though there was no tomorrow! Even though she was about 10 days early, we examined her fleece and it appears to be very good even after only a few hours.

This is a short blog to announce her birth and have included a few photo's:

Whoops.......Missed the milk bar

Look at me.....Aren't I cute!

Will be back with more pics soon.

How time flies.........

It has been a whirlwind of activity here at Easter-Wood over the last two weeks and I seem to have lost track of the days! Our birthing programme has started in earnest with a wonderful male from Cambridge Sara's mating with EP Cambridge Samson whom we call Samson's Diego. This was closely followed by one of Cambridge Ice Cool Lad's matings last year to produce Moon Dance, a very pretty light brown female from one of our black girls, Marmite. We have used Cambridge Ice Cool Lad for all of our matings on our coloured alpacas last year and we are awaiting the imminent arrival of the next cria today! During the next two weeks, we are also expecting another 6 cria, one of which is the eargerly awaited Wellground Close Encounter mating with our Yuralee Daisy of Cambridge.

We have finally moved into the cabin even though it is not quite finished. We couldn't wait as the thought of staying in the caravan any longer further filled me with a sense of despair!! Anyway, I am working frantically on the floor tiling and with about 70% of it completed, the end of this project is in sight. After this, I will fit the skirting followed by the ridge tiles on the roof. With all of this activity, I seem to have lost 1.5 stone so if anyone is thinking of going on a diet, forget it: Just build your own cabin!!

Today, the rain has returned and with the last few weeks being really dry, it is a welcomed boost to the growing grass. To finish this blog today, I have posted a few more pictures of our new youngsters:

Here's Samson's Diego

Here's one with a tired looking mum!

The above are of Moon Dance

Now I am off to prepare for another attack on the floor tiling!

More photos and yet another arrival

Following the delivery of EP Cambridge Samson's cria on Tuesday, I have posted a couple more photo's of him.

Today, we were surprised to welcome an early delivery for Branson Marmite who, following her mating with Cambridge Ice Cool Lad, gave birth to a healthy, strong female cria and as my Grandaughter was present, asked her to suggest a name for her. Our new member of the Easter-Wood herd is now called Easter-Wood Moon Dance.

I will post some more photo's of her tomorrow.

The annual shearing followed by a late delivery!

Yesterday was a very hectic day and as every Alpaca breeder knows, shearing is a "full on" exercise. Mike Banks arrived at Easter-Wood late afternoon and we immediately set to work laying out a double mat to speed up the process. With Mike and his team demanding full involvement from us, it was fortunate that we had pre-empted this and employed the services of some of our friends and family whom without them, would have been shearing into the very late hours of the night! Even then, we still didn't finish until gone 9 pm at which time, we settled down to a wonderful Chilli and "nibbles" which went down particularly well!.

This morning, Sheila and I made the routine check on the now "bald" girls and boys and immediately noticed that Cambridge Sara was more restless than normal (she was due to have her cria last week) and within minutes, saw the head of her cria appearing. One hour later, she gave birth to a healthy male out of EP Cambridge Samson. He is a wonderful, strong boy and on his feet within an hour.

 "Look at me, I can stand and I am only 1 hour old!"

Mum and cria settle down for the night.

Our forthcoming events

Hi folks. It has been yet another long break since my last blog and the reason is simply that I am trying to cram in the final stages of the Log Cabin build along with the busy time we are having with ourAlpaca business.

All of our girls are now pregnant with the first cria due at any day now. This will be from EP Cambridge Samson's mating to EP Cambridge Sara last year, courtesy of Rob Rawlins at Wellground Alpaca Stud. We are so looking forward to what we believe will be a spectacular result and further complimenting her first born cria last year (Easter-Wood Navigator) from EP Cambridge Neptune. Next up will be a long awaited cria from Yuralee Daisy of Cambridge from her mating with Wellground Close Encounter. The end of June sees another potential success story with our first cria out of EP Cambridge Buckingham also courtesy of Rob at Wellground Alpaca Stud. Our fingers are crossed for the successful delivery of such quality cria!
It is always a testing time and whilst we had a relatively trouble-free (with a couple of exceptions) birthing sessions last year, we never take it for granted!

With the finishing touches currently being applied to our Log Cabin, we will be finally moving in by Thursday this week whilst the decking structure will commence this coming weekend. The following pictures shows the latest development.

External walls are stained

Start of the floor tiling in the lounge

View from the bedroom through to the lounge

Signing off for the night now but will be back soon.