Fencing has rather taken over my life of late and I’m afraid the blog has been ignored. I have done one side of the fields which is about 40% of the job. The is well buried to about two feet which in most places is in rock so I’m sure it will do the job.

On the cria side, Ebony delivered us a little girl last night at 7.00pm. Another unusual time, maybe they feel safe behind the fencing!!

The cria was not what we ordered at all, a light fawn and Ebony is solid black!! Oh well that was the one I was really hoping for a beauty from for the challenge with the mighty Patou herd. So it looks like it will be Hobgoblin representing Popham.

After what seems like ages Tinderbox finally decided to do the deed at about 6.30 yesterday evening. Another strange time this year!! Anyway the result is a fantastic brown male who has gone straight to the top of the list for our showdown with Patou Alpacas next year. Sire is Camouflage so again he produces a solid colour when put to a colour ( mum is black). Grand sire is the Australian super stud Jolimont Warrior so I suspect there may be a few nervous moments in Wiltshire shortly. Popham Hobgoblin is top of the list for his name.

The cria in the background is not another Camouflage result, I just hapened to slip with the iodine. You don’t need much of an imagination to guess what Felicia said!!!!

It’s official, Cathy Lloyd is my favourite  judge in the world closely followed by Liz Barlow. Popham proudly did the double at North Devon on Wednesday with Flame and Cinderella and then on Thursday won the suri prize at Honiton with Dream Catcher.

Well that’s it now for the year. No more shows. Now we start preparing for the next season especially for the little competition we have going with Mark at Patou Alpacas. Only problem is we only still have one brown cria and that’s Dino who I am pleased to say is still with us and doing well except that he has now lost the sight in one eye ( hopefully temporarily ) with a corneal ulcer. That’s the problem with these prem cria, they don’t seem to have a good immune system. However I am confident that the brown cria will arrive shortly and Marks period of sleeping easy will be over.

On Thursday we had another girl arrive, a gorgeous light fawn suri out of Finesse. We have named her Snowflake. This is Felicia’s idea. All the girls are to be named after soaps. So we also have Sunlight, Fairy, Aerial, Lennor etc etc. That has of course allowed me to name the boys and obviously I had to name them after beers. So we have a Abbott, a  Bombardier and a Doom Bar so far. I have been allowed to name one girl and thats the spotty one and I have called her Speckled Hen. She will be registered as Speckled Lady but will always be Speckled Hen in my mind. I have a little job this evening and that is to nip up to the Rising Sun at Botus and get some more beer names. I’ll have to taste them first of course!!

The first load of timber and netting for my fencing project has arrived so Monday is the official start. The fellow with the digger is coming to dig the trench and I will be following along behind with my tractor banging the posts in. Yes my post driver is now repaired after my little mishap while practicing with it.

Nothing new to report on the cria front recently but we are due some more shortly. The next being Tinderbox, our black girl who is mated to Camouflage, so that will be exciting.

My fencing project came to a halt on the first day when I broke my new post puncher by hitting a gate post with the control levers and breaking two off. Disaster!! Anyway some more are on order and I’ll soon be back on the project.

We recently visited a rhea farm in the Midlands and learnt an awful lot about the birds. One amazing sight was to see the male rheas sitting on twenty eggs. Yes, that’s right the males are the ones that become broody and do the caring of the young. We didn’t think this was possible in the country with our rainfall soaking the nests but what you have to do is get the males to nest in sheds or under cover by training them with food which is what we have now started to do. We also now reckon we have two males and one female which is ideal. When the breeding season stars next year,  while one male sits,

 the other can continue with the breeding and you put the fertilised eggs under the broody male. Simple!!!!

Popham has a lot of unfenced paddocks where all we are relying on are the Cornish hedges and the alpacas intelligence not to jump over them. Also quite a bit of our fencing need re-doing so I have decided to ring fence the property. I got a few fellows in to give me some quotes. Wow not cheap so once I had picked myself off the floor I decided to do it myself.

The big advantage of this is that it allows me to go out and buy a new toy, in fact two.

The first is a post driver for compact tractors. It wields a 150kg weight and slams the posts into the ground like a knife into butter. I’ve tried it and have successfully driven in a 8inch post four feet into the ground where it will remain. Fantastic. My next bit of kit is a Fast Fencer. This hasn’t arrived yet but fits on the back of the tractor and lets the wire netting out and slams a gate on it to tension it up.

So that will be my project for the next few months so watch this space.

Sorry about the poor quality photo but I had to use my camera phone as I forgot the trusty Nikon. But in the photo you will see the new Popham Alpaca show tent. A fine structure that’s not as easy to erect as the blurb said it would be. In fact its quite a job and yesterday morning at the Liskeard show I had to erect it twice. Its a long story but basically what happened was on arrival I couldn’t find my pitch so asked a few people including the secretary who directed me back to the gate to ask someone there. “Pitch it any where in the country side area” I was told by somebody with a badge. So I did, bang next door to the bacon butty tent. Perfect. Now this tent weighs a ton and I struggled to get it set up and had just finished when Felicia arrived to help!!

Now this is when it starts getting nasty. Some fellow on a quad turned up and advised me that I couldn’t erect my tent there. Well according to Felicia a sort of mist enveloped me and I started jumping up and down on the ground whilst gesticulating madly. But this fellow on the quad was having none of it. I had to move to the pitch he had now marked out for me!!! Felicia managed to calm me down,  along with the rain that had now started to fall and after threatening to pack up and go we reset our pitch in our new position.

I’m glad we stayed in the end as the sun came out and business was good. During the morning whilst recounting my encounter with the fellow on the quad to a couple of old Cornish boys they looked at me and said with a wise look in their eyes ” Oh you’ve got to watch him, see he’s from Wiltshire”!!

Three girls in a row. That’s beginning to balance the numbers a bit but its still 9 to 5 in favour of the boys.

Not that they arrived without their fair share of trouble. This is what happens when you leave Felicia and Tracy in charge for a day!! Early Tuesday morning Dalia appeared to be in labour but nothing was happening so they brought her in and examined her only to find she was fully dilated but no head or legs where they should be so immediately they called the vet. Yep malpresented, head and neck back. Ropes and everything were needed but all was ok and a gorgeous white female huacaya was soon on the ground. During this our suri girl Emma went into labour but delivered easily a little light fawn suri girl without complications and the vet left very happily.   All is well you would think but when Tracy checked Emma an hour or so later she had prolapsed and sure enough the vet was on her way back again. I won’t go into the details but everything was put back into place and Emma and cria seem fine.

Sometimes I must say I’m happier at work !!!!!!

Wednesday morning went much better for Felicia and Acari gave birth to another spotty. This time a girl and she’s even got grey ears!!

After a few quiet days on the cria front with no new arrivals today changed everything. Probably because I was on mid wife duty but fortunately apart from administering the iodine I wasn’t needed. Another girl, a lovely fawn suri daughter from Matador and half an hour later Richards first cria arrived. This time a light fawn huacaya boy who looks lovely. Both were very strong and up and about in no time. What a pleasure. Thats 8 boys and 2 girls…mmm

Thought you might like the picture of the cria and rhea.

Another boy arrived safely today. A white suri out of another brown mum. Not exactly helping our plans of building a coloured suri herd!! And it is not helping that its 7 boys to one girl so far!!!!!! He’s a good size and covered in fleece so hopefully once he dries off I can get some nice pictures.

We had some great news from our daughter Victoria. She did an inter collated year whilst at med school do do another degree. She got a 1st. I reckon she inherited my brains and Felicia’s work ethic. Anyway she now has the letters BSc POSH after her name (Population, Sciences and Humanities). Anyone who knows Victoria will agree the letters suit her. She’s now back into her 4th year at med school.

By the way I didn’t win with Sumpfuster, the spotty boy is going to be called Popham Serengetti.

Felicia is away for a few days leaving me on cria watch and after diligently cria watching all day with no new arrivals I had relaxed and was getting ready to go out for the evening with some mates when I thought I would make one last check at about quarter to five. Just as well I did as Cleopatra was in labour. Phew….could you imagine the trouble I would have been in.

Anyway all went well and I am very happy to say that Popham has it’s first SPOTTY. A very large boy, as you can see from the photo he is almost as big as his mother. How do they fit in there I don’t know. That’s makes Camouflages tally three spotties out of white mums and two solids out of coloured mums.

All being well I went to the pub as planned and popped in to check on him at about 8.00pm before going next door for some supper.

Returning home at about 11.30pm I diligently made on last check and was concerned to see a white cria suckling from a brown mum. Hang on I thought we don’t have any white crias with brown mums. The penny finally dropped and through the red wine fog I realised we’d had another cria in my absence since 8 o’clock. That’s not supposed to happen. Aren’t they meant to only give birth between the civilised hours of 9 and 3.

I’m happy to say alls ok and Popham now has its first girl of the year , a white suri.

Thing is do I come clean and tell Felicia the truth because if I do the next time she’s away and I’m on cria watch I won’t be allowed out in the evening either!!