A Chairman girl!

Welcome to our latest cria;...... A beautiful female cria out of Cambridge The Chairman of ACC whom we have named Easter-Wood Adelle:

Easter-Wood Adelle finding Metisha's "milk bar"

She was  born on Saturday morning and since Metisha was a maiden, it was not an easy delivery. She was clearly struggling during her labour and in the end, she simply gave up trying, finally deciding to lie down at which point we helped her deliver. We sprayed her navel and checked her weight and all this time Metisha just lay there trying to figure out what was happening. I then carried her cria and placed her in front of Metisha's nose. She seemed a littled startled by the fact that this little pure white bundle was doing her best to get to her feet. After a while, she realised that she should be doing her bit and so up she got and within 20 minutes, both mum and baby were bonding well and subsequently, she found the milk bar. Adelle came into this world at 8kgs and although we are a tad biased, we are very pleased with her along with her excellent pedigree.

Easter-Wood Adelle

Just showing off now!!

Today, our two new elite crias have been introduced and they have spent the best part of this morning running around together. Both Adelle and Aramis, who is now 2 months old and an Accoyo Remarque boy, seem to be enjoying each others company. Here they are together:

Adelle and Aramis

Will be back soon.

Two more births and an Alpaca Experience Day

We have had an interesting few days just lately with two boys arriving in fairly quick succession. The first was a lovely light brown boy with a beautiful phenotype and weighing in at a healthy 8.9kgs. His mum is Blackie who is quite frankly, getting on in years but she certainly knows how to produce wonderful cria and this year decided to pop him out at 7:20am!! Her cria last year was a beautiful girl Truffle, whom we sold just a few months ago. Whilst her cria this year has yet to be named, we are in no doubt that he will soon attract interest.

Our unamed boy

Last Friday, at 1.00 pm, Marmite delivered a medium brown boy with very interesting white markings. This is the first time we have had one of Ice Cool Lad's cria producing a non-solid colour however the markings are quite distinctive and as can be seen in the picture, his name of Zorro is probably quite appropriate!

Zorro weighs in at 8.1kgs

Today was this months Alpaca Experience Day for us which has so far proved to be very popular. We had a smaller turnout than usual however as we had two postponements but it was, nonetheless a most enjoyable day and we were blessed with good weather. Here are a couple pics from the day:

Will be back soon.

And along comes the seventh!

An absence from blogging during the last few weeks is down to a rather pressing care issue with my father whom I mentioned in my last blog, as he had undergone some major heart surgery followed by a lengthy stay in hospital. This was, I am afraid to say compounded by the intervention of well-meaning "friends" and it was necessary for both my sister and I to put a care package in place for him...........it's a long drawn out story which I won't go into as this is as far away from alpacas as you can get!!

Anyway, back at Easter-Wood, we have now had our seventh cria all within a 3 week period....here are some of them:

Arabella and Philby, who is on the right

This is Boniface

 

Chester with mum, Lai Lai

This pictures shows Layla with her mum, Torn Ear and Boniface on the right

This is Arabella having a snooze with mum, Fedora

Our swallows this year have taken to nesting in the same spot as last year, namely the rafters within the stable block and the other morning I had a need to go into one of the stables which is no longer in use, and there upon the ground was a young swallow. He couldn't yet fly but had managed to climb out of his nest and had dropped rather ungainly to the floor. Poor little blighter was clearly distressed, so I scooped him up and placed him back in the nest along with his brothers and sisters. Two days later however, they were all gone so I guess they were due to fly the nest anyway.

We had a visit from a lovely couple from Holland last week who are over here on holiday and following a call from my son's in laws who know them from their camping connections, they came to look at our alpaca farm and went away with a bag of fleece from one of our boys. It was a nice afternoon and it was great to see their delight when showing them our most friendly girls who insisted on nibbling their clothing. 

Will be back again soon.

More arrivals coming thick and fast!

Following on from the announcement in our previous blog that we would be pretty busy this week, we have had three more of Cambridge Ice Cool Lad's cria born during the last two days. One fawn male whom we have named Easter-Wood Philby and one light fawn female whom we have called Easter-Wood Alice both appeared on Tuesday of this week within an hour of each other! This morning saw the arrival of a light fawn female who we have named Easter-Wood Boniface. Thankfully, all cria are healthy and full of energy. We are now awaiting the arrival of three more of Cambridge Ice Cool Lad's progeny over the next two weeks, during which time we are also expecting Easter-Wood Metisha to give birth to a Cambridge The Chairman of ACC's cria. The following months, up to September will also be busy with the remainder of the elite herd giving birth.

Easter-Wood Philby at 3 hours old

Getting to know you!

Easter-Wood Alice trying to bond with mum!

Less than 1 hour old!

Yesterday saw me heading off to the south coast whilst Sheila was on farm watch. Sadly, my father is somewhat unwell at the moment having just undergone major heart surgery so both my sister and I visited him in hospital, hopefully to give him some cheer! He will take a while to recover of course but he certainly looked pretty good considering what he has been through!!

Will close for now but will be back soon.

A new arrival!

With our birthing now in full swing, we had another new cria today at 3:40 pm weighing in at 8.86kgs. She is a beautiful, solid mid brown female out of Alonso Fedora. Fedora always seems to deliver early and is not only a text book mum, she also always has a text book delivery! From the  moment she went into labour she appeared to be very relaxed and after about 30 minutes, her cria (we have named her Easter-Wood Arabella) was delivered without any hitches. She was up and on the milk bar within 15 minutes as is evident from the pictures below.

With the fast approaching rain again tonight, we have now put both Fedora and Arabella in the barn so that at least both mum and baby can bond in the warmth/dry.

Will be back again soon with no doubt the announcements of further births!

Fleece delivered for the GWR show!

Whilst I got on with the daily farm duties, Sheila, along with Gemma (our Daughter) had arranged to drop off our fleece entries for the forthcoming GWR show to Rosemary at Westhill Alpacas today. After an uneventful drive to Blandford and by way of a reminder of directions via a brief telephone call to Rosemary, Sheila was, as usual, warmly welcomed by Rosemary and Sam. After some Alpaca/Yarn banter accompanied with coffee and biscuits, Sheila set off once again for the return journey, arriving home armed with a Take Away Chinese! Its amazing what you can pick up on the way from Dorset!!

Our latest cria, Aramis is showing us how fast he can run with spontaneous sprints across the paddock causing his mum to panic as he temporarily disappears out of sight only to appear again heading back at breakneck speed! At only four days old........It never ceases to make us smile when they get up to these antics particularly during the early evening just when the sun dips out of view. Next one is due soon so the birthing box is always ready!

This is only a short blog tonight but I feel guilty that my blogging is a little infrequent!! I will be back soon.

New arrival, visit to the mill and a weekend off!!

As everybody knows, it is a real delight when the first cria of the year arrives and as always, we were excited at the arrival of our first for this year........ a healthy, 10.24kg boy from Memory of ACC out of Accoyo Remarque. We have named him Easter-Wood Aramis following on from our latest theme out of Alexandre Dumas's book, The Three Musketeers.

It wasn't a straight forward birth as we would hope and so we assisted Memory with her ordeal. As soon as the cria's head and part of his feet were presented, it was obvious that one foot was slightly back and to make matters worse, both of his feet were alongside his head and not above it! Once the feet had been manipulated into the correct position however, everything went to plan and she delivered without any further complications! Since Gemma, a new Alpaca Breeder and latest client of ours, was here at the farm, she was able to witness her first birth! We are expecting a significant number of cria this month so our lives are going to be pretty hectic during the next few weeks!

Having collected 25Kg of solid white fleece from this years shearing back in June, we took a trip up to Banbury a couple of weeks ago to deliver our fleece to Haggers Mill. Whilst there, Richard Hagger gave us a quick guided tour around the mill and I have to admit that whilst I have an engineering background, I was in total awe of the complex machinery that surrounded us! Anyway, we are looking forward to receiving the finished product from them.

At the beginning of this month, I went off to play a bit of golf in Devon. Along with my son Neil, my brother-in-law and another friend, we headed off to a long weekend of Golf, eating good food and enjoying the sunshine. I have to say that my golf wasn't up to much but the break, the food and the banter was much appreciated!! Whilst this was my second year at Ashbury (near Oakhampton), my son had not been before and upon arriving, he acknowledged that this was indeed a wonderful golfing mecca but observed that 98% of the guests were men! We have therefore nick-named it "Blokeland"!!

"A blokes weekend"!!

We have now taken delivery of another 40 large bales of  haylege for this year and it seems that not only is it most prefered by our Alpacas, it is cheaper than hay so it's a no brainer really...... ! We are also trying a new (to us) Alpaca/Llama mix from our local stockist. It appears to be somewhat similar to goat mix but certainly seems to be a favourite of the "pacas"!

Will return again soon.