A period of absence explained

My blog has, I'm afraid been somewhat in-active during the last couple of months and for this I can only apologize. Plenty has been going on here at Easter-Wood and what with winter preparation, Christmas plans and garment production, I just simply ran out of time! For those of you who are well disciplined in regularly blogging, I can only take my hat of to you in admiration. I wish I had that kind of well organized approach.

Woke up to a crisp, cold morning today and what a welcome this is from the ever present "mud" we have endured over the last couple of weeks! Taking a leaf out of other breeders blogs, I have decided to ensure that all photos of our alpacas are limited to head and shoulder shots in future however, this approach will commence with the next blog as I haven't yet captured any worthwhile pictures.

In a way to reduce the effect of the mud on our alpacas, we have now re-organized our paddocks access so that most of them are now able to wander in and out of the barn thus reducing the "poaching" effect on the fields and giving them a warmer, drier place to sleep/eat. We also find it far more practical when administering their injections and routine husbandry. I have to say that this design was in part due to some outright plagiarism (thanks Barbara & Paul)!!

On the subject of husbandry, we had an excellent day at our local vets earlier this month. They put on a husbandry class for alpacas which covered just about as much as one can fit into a day's session. It was, to say the least, exemplary and we both came away feeling that we had learnt so much in such a short space of time. Anyway, well done Larkmead Veterinary Group.

Whilst paddock cleaning is such a back breaking exercise when the weather is so wet ( on the basis that it's impossible to get the "poover" out), I am now so much happier that the cold weather has hardened up everything such that alpaca poo can now easily be removed using a simple rake and scoop! On that note, I will take my leave of you and promise to return soon (with photo's)!

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.

A correction and another delivery!

Following on from my blog yesterday, announcing the arrival of Easter-Wood Dante, we reminded ourselves that we had set out to follow the Three Musketeers theme for our elite boys and clearly "Dante" doesn't fit....doesn't even come close to D'Artagnan so we have re-named him Easter-Wood Athos!!

A slightly "cleaner" version of Athos

With this correction suitably addressed, we now come to the naming of our elite male delivered this morning! Easter-Wood Porthos came into this world at 9:45 am weighing in at a healthy 9.59 kgs. His Dam is Yuralee Daisy of Cambridge and his Sire is EP Cambridge Strike Gold with genetics as follows; EP Cambridge Valour, EP Cambridge Peruvian Spartacus, EP Cambridge Equinox.

Porthos - at 6 hours old.

Porthos completes our 2011 birthing and so we are now planning for next year's show circuit and as we have recently purchased a suitable "Paca Wagon", we are looking forward to hitting the road, so to speak!

Will be back again soon.

A bright start to the day!

An early rise to this view above our farm was recorded this morning and my thoughts turned (for some inexplicable reason) to an event in British history which happened way before I was born ... the Battle of Britain!!

Anyway turning to modern history, I am proud to announce the arrival of a very healthy male cria born this morning to Eringa Park Artistry of EPC and was sired by Cambridge The Chairman of ACC. We have named him Easter-Wood Dante. Sadly, mum decided to deliver him directly on a patch of very dusty earth which has given him a distinctly filthy look!!

Easter-Wood Dante

A "sooty" looking Easter-Wood Dante seeking the milk bar!

His genetics are as follows; Jolimont Commisario, Cambridge Show Stopper, NWA Ltd Ruffo, Jolimont Encantador.

Following this mornings excitement, we then got on with other jobs around the farm, one of which is my routine "clearing up" of the spillage from the hay feeders......Whilst these feeders are meant to keep the hay/haylage within the feeder itself, our alpacas seem to be able to spread hay/haylage over an extremely wide area around the feeder! I must have cleared at least four barrow loads from the proximity of two individual feeders! Messy lot!!

Will be back again soon.

Something is in the air!

Just a short blog tonight......As Lawbreaker's Legend and Adelle are rapidly developing, they are now inseperable and whilst all cria's are gorgeous, I can't help spending so much time just simply watching these two play together....you know what I mean...... the evening pronking and the playful tag games....it's all so spellbinding. I guess I have to admit to being a bit of a softy really! Anyway, here are a few photo's of the aforementioned pair:

Lawbreaker's Legend and Adelle's first attempt at a kiss!

Mirror image as their attention is grabbed by chickens on the other side of the fence.

Lawbreaker's Legend wants to play rather than graze!

Adelle chases away a playful Lawbreaker's Legend

If you enlarge this photo, you can see the reflection of Sheila in Lawbreaker's Legend's eye!

The weather hasn't been to kindly today but at least we managed to clear two paddocks of alpaca poo....a job which is always quite demanding however, Sheila drove the mini tractor whilst I "poovered" this time which made for any easier and quicker task.

Signing off for tonight but will be back soon.

What a night!!

Our poor little Lawbreaker's Legend went through the mill yesterday/early this morning!!

Yesterday morning, it was evident that he had been rolling around in the mud a lot and his demeanor, to say the least was listless. During the course of the day, he would kush then roll over and kick his legs out. This he did frequently. He would then get up and walk a bit and then drop down again onto his side and again, roll. He did not take any feed from mum whatsoever during the whole day, so it was down to bottle feeding him with some of mum's milk that we had expressed. Took his temperature........that was fine but nonetheless fitted him out with his cria coat. Called the vet and went through all the likely possibilities. Took instruction all to no avail. Decided to bring him into the barn with mum and continued the bottle feeding. This carried on until late last night when we decided that we were none the wiser as to the cause of his problems and we called the vet out on an emergency!

She arrived in the early hours of this morning....checked temperature, listened to his pulse rate, checked abdomen, weighed him, took blood samples and then as we had not seen him poo yet, she administered a liquid paraffin enema! Well that certainly did the trick in quite a spectacular way!! No sooner than he had ejected the retained meconium, all of his troubles were over and within 20 minutes, he was up and feeding from mum. We all breathed a huge sigh of relief but it taught us a very important lesson.......................if you are unsure about the ailment of your alpacas, do not hesitate to call the vet!!