Here’s a date for your diary, Saturday the 27th September will be Open Day here at Popham.

We’re planning it all now so will keep you informed as to what to expect but so far we got spinners and Llamas planned. The Liskeard spinning group will be here doing some demonstrations and Tom and Julie Tripp will be bringing some llamas up from LLamaLLand.

There’s much more in the pipeline and of course there will be the alpacas.

I the must apologise for the rain. Everytime we do any shearing the weather changes and we now have alpacas shivering away in the height of summer. Not surprising really when you think about it. Last week they were fully fleeced and the temperature was 26 degrees so it must have felt like 40 degrees. Now they’re shivering in 15 degrees without a coat.

The pregnant mums are holding on tight as well waiting for the sunshine again. Matings are in full flow now so the males are a bit more alive and jumpy with eachother. The young brown suri Caligula has to taken to it like an old pro. Definately stud material.

This weekend we have been invited upto the EP Cambridge Stud Farm for a “Summer Alpaca Soiree” with seminars by Ian Watt and Jane Vaughn. Make sure to check out next weeks blog for pictures of Felicia and I mixing it with the Alpaca “High Society” !!!

Some pictures of our latest group of cria. The first is the girl born yesterday who we have nicknamed Floppsy the second for obvious reasons. She is 8.7kg and has teeth showing so can’t be premature but her ears would certainly say otherwise. The two white youngsters are Verdello boys. The fawn girl in the front of the last picture is a Classical Milend Alpacas Centurion female cria and the stunning boy behind her is a very smart Little Legend boy

Two of our younger males have gone for a summer holiday to the Cornish Maize Maze. they’ve joined the other attractions in the animal pen. Hopscotch and Butterscotch, the two goats gave them a pretty warm reception. The cows and the pigs weren’t interested. Probably because it was just too hot.

Meanwhile back at home one of our visiting females gave birth to a female cria with no problems.

We have a male suri going to Germany and I have being doing the Traces (export permit ) application. Did you know that alpacas are described, for official purposes, as ungulates that ruminate !! They are not ungulates of the infraorder suina ( this includes the warthog ), nor are they ungulates which are neither of the above which includes rhinoceroses. There you go, as they say you learn something new everyday. To me they will still be alpacas.

Well its a quiet time with the crias at the moment. All are doing well and Francesca’s eye is healing nicely. it’s a good oppurtunity to check them all over, weigh them, get their jabs upto date and also check for digital dermatitis. This can be pretty infectious and is best treated with purple spray. We’ve got a couple with it. They look very elegant running around in their purple boots.

We had a vist from David and Angela Gibson from Rosevine Alpacas. They brought one of their suri girls up to visit Matador who was very pleased to see her himself.

We started the mating season today, at long last according to the stud males as the picture shows. As mentioned in previous blogs we’ve left it much later this year so as to free up our time earlier on come 2009. hopefully it’ll work and we won’t have too many empty females come winter.

This weekend we are finishing off the blue tongue vaccinations, hopefully without problems as with the first batch. I have met a another breeder this week who had an animal become very poorly after the vaccine but seems to have pulled through. The BAS have sent out an email full of encouragement to use the stuff reporting very low abortion rates of one in a million so fingers crossed we get throuh ok.

After the mad few weeks of cria arrivals things have gone very quiet here. Our next one due is one of our favourite suris Jazz. Last year she gave us a beautiful girl, this year she is mated to Bulleyman so we are hopefull of another cracker. The suri cria Francesca has had a nasty corneal ulcer, probably scratched it in the hay. We have been hitting it hard with ciloxan eyedrops which seem to be doing the trick but they need to be put in 4 or 5 times a day to keep on top of it. This means we’ve had to bring her into the raceway with mum or else you are chasing her around the field. Unfortunately mum takes exception to this so you need to go out with a towel to cover your self as she is a bit of a spitter.

As hoped for, we made it into the Western Morning news yesterday with a picture of Elliot and his young friend Sam ( see previous blog). That must be the third time Elliot has been in print, he is a star.

We took the alpacas to the for the first time to Launceston show today. I’m beginning to realise that there is a sort of hierachy at these events and the more often you appear the better the pitch you get. Theres’s nothing wrong with that except when it’s your first appearance. We had a great spot bang opposite the mechanical organ in the fairground. This wasn’t as loud as the Bodmin College Jazz band but niether was it as talented. But as ever the alpacas seemed to enjoy it. I had the pleasure of Victoria, my daughter helping out today who really enjoyed talking about the alpacas and even managed to get a spot on BBC Radio Cornwall with Laurence Reed. I’ve never managed that, I wonder why!

Elliott, everyones favourite alpaca was talent spotted by the Western Morning News and we managed to pinch this shot while they were photographing with young Sam. maybe we’ll be in tomorrows paper as well !!