This lovely dry weather gives the alpacas a chance to clean up and for their fleeces to be looked at without destroying them by trying to open a soggy mush!!!

This is Raindrop, one of our spotty girls and to say we were delighted when we opened up her fleece would be an under statement. She is beautiful. I do love the spots !! I’m looking forward to the multi classes this year all of a sudden.

Pimped up my Paca Van at Mr Sticker in Saltash last week, I’m very pleased with the result but I better not cut any one up at the roundabout in future. I’ll never get away with it !!

Well it’s the day after Boxing Day and the relatives have left and we have the house to ourselves again. Time to sit down and reflect on a very busy Christmas period. Forecasters had it all wrong and we haven’t had a drop of rain. The raceways are beginning to dry up and the alpacas are cleaning up quite nicely.

Our new office has arrived and is in place, though I must confess to a couple of sleepless nights worrying whether they would ever get the lorry in, let alone out again. Easy as pie in the end. When it came to turning around he just lifted his tail up with the crane and swung himself around, bit of shuffling back and forth and in no time he was pointing in the right direction.

So I now have an office and when the electric is in I will have no excuses for not updating the website, alpacaseller ( may even get round to putting some alpacas on for sale !!) and of course a more regular blog.

Anyway Merry Christmas to everyone ( whats left of it anyway ) and a Properous New Year.

Apologies once again to anyone out there who may still look at this blog, I know it’s been a long time.

The alpacas are all well, we’ve all the mums and cria in the barn for the foreseeable future, at least until this weather passes over. They quite like it in there, it just means a lot of mucking out but the hay is good and it gives Felicia and I a chance to look at some dry fleeces.

Masquerade has settled in now and is halter trained. he was one of the easiest we’ve had even at 2 1/2 years of age so he’ll be seen in the show ring next year. His fleece stats came back at 22.2micron. Very pleasing.

I attended the SW Tb advisory group talk at West Dorset alpacas. It was very informative and very encouraging with respect to the low number of new cases this year. Hopefully some of the doom and gloom will lift. They have asked me to organise on further down west in Cornwall which I am in the process of doing.

We held a very successful Vets day for the CCA group. Unfortunately it clashed with the SWAG AGM so our numbers were down but we still managed 21 delegates. Miranda Josephson from Calweton Vet group gave a brilliant presentation on parasites and reproduction which was well received as was Felicia’s lunch. Steve and Jayne from Quelvehin Alpacas in Brittany joined us but unfortunately our alpaca friends from Hungary couldn’t make it.

Today Peter Roisetter and I had a meeting with Ollie Allen who runs the Devon County Show  of which we run the alpaca section. What a phenomenal lady she is. Anyway plans are under way to make some definite improvements to next years show which include an improved running order, fleece section, bigger marquees, a permanent fenced ring, more rosettes and sponsorship possibilities. Not all of our suggestions were approved but hopefully next year will be bigger and better.

There is a new addition to the Popham menagerie, a 10 week old Lab puppy going by the name of Hogan. He and Ribo and Felicia  are the best of buddies!!

It’s a long time since the last blog but we’ve had all sorts of problems with our server, at one point we thought we’d lost everything but all is back to normal now so no excuses.

For some time now I have been faced with a slight dilemma, not one that is that immediate but is brewing for next year. Basically what male do I put on the Camouflage daughters. My first thought was to use a white male but then I began looking for another appaloosa male and I am very hopeful I have found him.

So let me introduce a new member of our stud team, Alpaca Stud Masquerade. He is a spotty male sired by the famous Dovecote Jaquinto, his dam is a grey female who is the grand dam of Nytember. He is a smashing strong, big boned individual with a beautiful soft fleece. He’s never been shown but will definitely be out there next year in the adult male fancy classes. His high frequency fleece style will also compliment that of Camouflage who tends to throw a broader crimp. Most of all though is that he has the spots running from nose to his toes and whats more he has something which we feel is very important in a potential appaloosa. He has a touch of grey in his topline and ears very like Camouflage.

Needless to say we are very excited.

Sorry I haven’t brought you the suri cria photos yet but I have something much, much more important to tell you. Popham madness has happened again and further diversification has set in. Not only are we doing pigs, chickens and rhea alongside the alpacas we have now diversified into sheep.

Yes it’s true, I bought a lamb off Jacqui at Cherokee Alpacas which is now in the freezer. The point is that this is the best lamb I have ever, ever tasted so ( unfortunately according to the senior partner) I googled Wiltshire Horn and bingo there was a market in Exeter last Friday  run by the Wiltshire Horn society, our equivalent of the BAS, one of two a year they organise…which was brilliant. Come on the BAS. Off we set this morning with trailer, Tracy who knows sheep well, the senior partner and guess who….yes Jacqui!!

A few hours later I was looking at rows of sheep looking at their fleeces which was a pretty dumb thing to do as these are self-shearing sheep. Their fleece is of little consequence as they shed it in the spring but that is what I was doing as that is all I know. Meanwhile Tracy was checking spring of rib with full heart, deep chest with a well filled brisket, wide and oblique shoulders etc etc…..ok  so I copied that from the catalogue.

We chose our three ewes and at 1.00pm the auction started. What I didn’t realise was that they can and do auction the sheep individually or as a pen which may contain upto 5 sheep. Sudden panic, Jacqui wanted one from one pen and I one from another. So sure enough we became very confused and began buying a pen of two lamb ewes which had caught my eye but I had only wanted one of them. Not to bad a problem as they were only 80 guineas each. ( Why guineas???).

Anyway to cut a long story short we came home home with a small herd..sorry flock of sheep. 5 ewes and 2 rams which the alpacas, as you can expect found as interesting as the pigs, rheas and chickens. Jacqui also increased her flock by two.

Our last cria of the year has arrived safe and sound. At last a coloured female huacaya. That makes it 22 for the year, 12 boys and 10 girls. Or to put it another way 13 huacayas and 9 suris.

In order of appearance we have Snow King ( sired by Flame ), Snow Patrol ( Joshua) and Snow Storm ( Flame again ). Those are the three white huacayas. Then we have the dark fawn boy called Tornado. ( He is Felicia’s favorite and is sired by Flame. He is a half brother to Thunder. ) Then we have our spotty girl Raindrop who is the fastest growing cria of the year.

Next in line is our black boy Eclipse who is sired by Equador and finally our latest girl a dark fawn female sired by Flame who has the curliest fleece of the year. ( She’s the one running with Snow Storm). So that’s some of our favourite huacayas of the year.I wonder if I’ll hear anything from the Mighty Leader of Patouland ????

Next blog I’ll bring you the suris.

We’ve just returned from a brief trip to France. First part was a great few days on Il de Re, fabulous weather, wine and food. i also think we managed to leave the island thinner than when we as Felicia discovered the joys of cycling !! Using the GPS on my blackberry I am very pleased to say that she managed to drag me kicking and screaming for over 60 kms over the two days. The breaks for lunch were fantastic though and seemed to make the effort all worthwhile.

For the second bit of the trip we moved to the Saumar area of the Loire Valley. The weather wasn’t so kind but fortunately all the cycle hire shops were closed so we had to do the sightseeing bit by car which was a real shame !! Loaded up with all the local wines though I hadn’t a clue what we were tasting most of the time, if it was nice we bought it.

After a brief stop to see Jayne and Steve at Quelvehin where we had a chance to look at their cria. There is one very smart looking Columbus cria who I look forward to seeing in the show ring next year.

Back on the home front 3 of the last 4 cria have arrived all safely. Two boys and a girl. The boys were both huacayas which wasn’t what we were hoping for as we are very low on the huacaya girls this year. However one of the boys looks full of potential but that’s probably me just getting excited as he was only born yesterday !!

It’s not often you have the camera at the right time but I managed to catch this fellow at the top of our driveway enjoying a bit of the rare sunshine this morning. Unfortunately I then walked into the BBQ and he soon took off!!!

Katlyn and Otto are from Hungary. They are working here in Cornwall for a while before returning to Hungary next year to set up an alpaca farm. They have been spending their free time with us learning the ropes and helping out with the alpacas.

This weekend we let the suri cria into the raceway for a bit of suri racing. They went mad charging from one end to the other. The little  black girl ( we hope black anyway but looks brown on the outside. She definitely looks bay black on the colour chart …fingers crossed ) Dede was the outright winner. Not because she was the fastest but because she spent most of the time in the air!! Maybe I could arrange a suri v huacaya race. Could be interesting.

Two more cria have arrived. The white male is Joshua’s first cria. His mum is Dalia, one of our best females and I must say he does look potentially very very good. Time will tell. The little fawn fella is a half brother to Thunder, sired by Flame our white male. Wish he had been a girl. Ebony, his mum will now be going back to Stresleckie for, hopefully a repeat recipe of Thunder.

We also said good bye to Serengetti today as he is going to live in Germany. Serengetti was our first home bred spotty alpaca. Felicia , in her normal fashion was very tearfull. He was collected by Sven Hell, Karen and Conya who had come all the way from Berlin for the weekend. They had managed tio visit Lands End and Newquay before getting to us. We had a great look around the farm before a fry up and then sending them on their way back to Dover via some other breeders.