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.

Shearing day!

With a later date this year, we finally had our shearer arrive yesterday. The alpacas were certainly long overdue and despite having a number of shearing days under our belts now, it is still an amazing shock to see the transformation..................all of which creates a total confusion as to which alpaca is which!! It was, as ever a full on event but surprisingly over in a relatively short while. Three hours later, all 33 alpacas were sheared (or is it shorn?), toenails trimmed and the odd one having their teeth trimmed. Along with Mike Banks and his team from Shearco, we were ably assisted by Gemma and Andrew who recently purchased their herd from us and my sister-in-law. Thanks to all of you. No sooner had the shearing been completed, the rain descended again so not only was our timing good, it was satisfying to see the paddocks getting a further dose of the wet stuff!

Seems like a different herd!!

Who are you now??

Our next job for this week is to sort and skirt the fleeces which, whilst being labour intensive, there is a significant satisfaction in performing this task and we are looking forward to having a really good look at all of the fleeces.

Once the routine feeding jobs have been done, we have decided to have a relatively easy day today although I am probably tempted to have a quick clean-up of a couple of paddocks which were used as a holding bay for the groups of Alpacas during the shearing!

Will be back again soon.

At last.....Rain!!

It has got to be the best part of 3 months since we had any (decent) rain but all that has now changed following a good drenching most of yesterday. We were getting quite concerned as no rain meant no grass and our birthing this year has not yet started................the first is due in early July but before that, we have our shearer due to arrive on Friday this week. He is later this year but despite our request for May shearing, he was held up in Australia for some reason! Anyway, now that the weather has finally broken, we are praying that Thursday/Friday is dry!!

We had an interesting incident the other day which involved both the horses and our Alpacas............We always keep Sheila's two horses quite seperate from the Alpacas in that they each have there own paddocks. The horses's paddock is not stock fenced, only post and railed but on this particular evening we decided to give the horses a treat by opening up a smaller paddock which is usually only occupied by the Alpacas. Access to the other paddocks which the Alpacas were in was by a small gate which can only be opened inwards. It appears that the youngest of the horses "sussed" out how to open the gate which then led to four paddocks being shared by both horses and twenty Alpacas!! No real damage done of course but since the horses paddock is only post and railed, any of the Alpacas could have quite easily slipped through the fencing!! Another lesson learnt.........don't underestimate the animals intelligence!!

We also have a very good reason to celebrate this week as the lovely couple (Gemma and Andrew) who recently purchased five of our Alpacas have been successful in securing a very nice piece of real estate for their farm. Congratulations to the both of you!

Signing off now but will be back soon.

A satisfying day!

Yesterday was a very satisfying day! All of the paddocks effectively "Poovered" and even the erradication of some persistent weeds in the form of Ragwort. It is truly remarkable that despite the intensly dry spell we are experiencing, those weeds continue to thrive. We are now so desperate for rain however and by my reckonings, we have only had a couple of "showers" in the last 11 weeks!! Carefully managed paddock rotation is the order of the day for the Alpacas as they would simply not get the grazing they require otherwise but we are still giving them ample helpings of haylage which appears to be well received!

Since building some raised beds around the farm and stocking them with a mixture of flowers and vegetables (they certainly smarten up the place), the chickens have taken a great fondness for scratching around these beds and effectively destroying these vulnerable plants so drastic action was taken in the form of converting a mating pen into a chicken run and restricting their roamings! All seem to go well until I noticed that one of the chickens, closely followed by the other began frantically pacing backwards and forwards along the fence line, seemingly looking to get out. I thought nothing of this as I had made sure that there would be no escape............................famous last words, first one of them was spotted in the paddock where their coop is, closely followed by the second! They had made their escape simply to gain access to their coop in order to lay their eggs!! Once this was done, I delivered them back to the converted mating pen and further escapes were never then attempted. So now we lock them in their coop at night and transfer them to the "mating pen" in the morning after they have layed their eggs! Who said that chickens have no brain!!

We had another group of visitors to Easter-Wood over the weekend and despite our preference to keep the visits to a strict timetable, we always over-run. Much interest is expressed with all of the animals we have and whilst the Alpacas remain the focus, many visitors are also drawn to Sheila's horses as well, not surprising though as they are both magnificant looking creatures.

After 12 years ownership of my Renault Laguna, it is now beginning to cost me more and more in repairs and so we will soon be seeking a replacement vehicle. Having seen Beck Brow Alpaca's and Wellground Alpaca's magnificant vans on their blogs, we acknowledge that a company van will be the answer for us to, so the search is on.

Today, we plan to take a trip to another local breeder as we haven't seen them for a while now. It will be good to catch-up and talk alpaca and have a fleece rummage so we are looking forward to this.

According to the weather forecast, it looks as though we are not expecting any rain what-so-ever over the next 5 days but I wouldn't mind betting that when it does finally arrive, it will be for a very extended period!