A weekend away

Saturday was the day that we moved Easter-Wood Metisha and Easter-Wood Adelle to their new home in Cumbria. An early morning start was the order of the day as we were faced with a 300 mile trip and to make matters worse, I had come down with the dreaded "man-flu" and as we all know, this is indeed a serious illness for us men folk!

However, all went well with the move. Metisha wasn't too keen to make her way into the van even though I carried Adelle in first but once in, they seem to settle down nicely. This was the first trip in the van for us and we were pleased with the ride, etc. The on-board CCTV camera to view the animals was a real bonus and we could at least check on mum and cria at regular intervals during the journey.

We were pleased that the weather was good and upon arriving in Cumbria, we were soon greeted with a magnificant sight of the hills/mountains which heralded our introduction to the Lake District. After a slight hicup with the Sat Nav, we soon arrived at Beck Brow Alpacas of Cumbria. What a wonderful, idylic place that Barbara and Paul have. This farm, at the heart of which is a charming old farm house simply oozed character and of course fields full of alpacas graced the scene.

Obviously the first thing for us to do was to unload Metisha and Adelle who were led into a unique, well planned series of pens all of which was covered and enabled the alpacas to be seperated into their various groups. Both Sheila and I were well impressed with this arrangement and I hope that we may be forgiven for a bit of plagiarism in the future!

We were made to feel most welcome and following a lovely meal at their local Fox & Pheasant, we stayed overnight and despite my cold getting worse, I managed to get a reasonable nights sleep. Problem was, I ran out of tissues so Barbara, very kindly sent me on my way the following morning with a couple of loo rolls but not until we had had a good look at their alpacas. Barbara and Paul have some very special animals there and with their attention to detail, we came away with the knowledge that both Metisha and Adelle will be well cared for! During our stay however, Sheila was particularly taken with Velvet, one of their little dogs and as can be seen from the photo, she has a tight hold on her (several attempts at sneaking her into the van was made of course)!

Sheila is determined to smuggle Velvet away!!

We eventually arrived back home at 8:30pm last night and pleased to say, without a hitch. Thanks to both of you for a most enjoyable but brief weekend.

This and That!

In some respects, I feel that a blog without photo's is a bit like Fish without Chips! I had planned to take advantage of the wonderful weather over the last week and take some photo's of our latest cria but like most plans, it didn't happen so here is a brief update, without the Chips!!

Subsequent to one of our Alpaca Experience Days back in August, I was invited by Christina, one of our visitors to a radio interview on a local radio station to talk about Alpaca Breeding yesterday. What a great experience that was and I was most impressed with their sophisticated and professional studio. Christina and Joanne made me feel most welcome so a big thank you to Marlow FM for a most enjoyable morning.

Now that we have completed our birthing for this year, we have our vet coming in tomorrow for ear tagging and microchipping which, given the numbers, will be a fairly lengthy session.

We have had a fair amount of interest from our local Agricultural College this year again with a number of students requesting work experience. We acknowledge that spending time on an Alpaca farm is good experience for the students and therefore, we have a couple commencing their time with us at the beginning of November with further students arranged for early next year.

The bad news is Summer is officially over! Can't complain however as we have had a better than average growth of grass here this year, we have a good stock of haylage and there is plenty of wood for the wood burning stove!

I hope to be able to include some photo's in my next blog, so apologies for the lack of them this time!

Back soon.