It’s full steam ahead for the Open Day on the 27th September. We’ve got Liskeard Spinners coming, LLamalland will be here with their animals doing a Popham equivalent of Llama trekking. A lady from Penzance will be doing a weaving demonstration. Theresa from Rosecraddock Alpacas will be doing a felting demonstration. Sue Blackler will be here from the Natural Fibre Company.

And of course the Alpacas and the cria you have seen on the Cria Blog.

Maybe one day somebody will figure out a way of predicting cria colour. These two suri boys are both Inca Matador cria and you would think the resulting colours would be the other way round. But maybe that unpredictability is part if the alpaca intrigue.

Only four more expectant mums left and then the season is over. Our matings are coming along well know with most of the females spitting away happily. They’ll be a few that will carry over to next year, I’m sure of it. Won’t be too long before we start thinking about weaning.

These are the latest two suri boys. I just love the way the suri cria shine, even without any sunshine around. Had a visit from Jane of Tudor Cottage Alpacas today. She is just starting out into the world of alpacas and is a committed huacaya fan but while we were walking around the cria I got a definate feeling there may be a suri or two in her fields one day.

Federer, he’s the one born during Wimbledon (obviously) has really started doing well now. His mum is picking up as well. The only thing the vet could find was a touch of anaemia. It just means another few months of bottle feeding….great.

All went well on our trip up along the line. Hopefully the two females we brought back will fall pregnant. It was a long way to go but great fun while we were there. Took a quick look around Arundel Castle which turned out to be alot longer than a quick look. Should have done it before the pub lunch!. Anyway we survived and even managed to catch a half hour of Lesley Garrett rehearsing for the evening concert in the gardens. Unfortunately I only had my phone camera with me so the pictures are disappointing.

All was well on out return with another suri boy arriving in our absence. The young male who is now being bottle fed has gained weight at last.

One of our white suri girls gave birth to a dazzling fawn suri boy out of Inca Matador. He has a white patch on his face but apart from that looks stunning. I know its very early but you still get excited with every cria. That leaves six to go for the year. The swallows have fledged and are practicing their flying, whizzing around the barn at frightening speeds.

We are off early tomorrow with a trailer load of alpacas, first port of call is to drop two black girls to EP Cambridge to be mated to their imported male Stresleckie. Then onto Moonsbrook to drop off two of our Matador girls for mating to Suri Wonder Dream and Bulleyman. These were matings we bought in the Futurity. We are going to spend the night up there and then back home on Monday stopping off to see Di Davies at Wessex with one of our Verdello girls to be mated to Wirracocha.

We had a visit from the Botus WI last night and they enquired about Storm and Gail. These were two cria that were born during the last WI visit on a very bad day weather wise. I thought it about time I put some upto date pictures of the two on the blog. Storm is the fawn boy sired by Little Legend and Gail the white huacaya girl sired by Alamo.

Still no further results on the unwell mum but she is not declining in anyway. Her cria is reluctantly taking milk from the bottle. Unlike other animals, alpacas seem to have the attitude that they would rather die than take milk from a bottle!!

The heavily pregnant mums are still holding on even though the sun is out today. We are away for the weekend taking alpacas to various places so they will probably all arrive then and put Jess under real pressure.

After a relatively dry couple of days the rain is back today. The heavily pregnant mums are hanging on for dry weather I reckon. The bottlefed took 250ml thus morning so fingers croosed and his mum has started chewing the cud again so fingers crossed there as well. No results from the vet yet. I’m taking a female upto Classical/Milend Alpacas today to be remated to Centurion. She was the one that lost her cria following the uterine torsion. On the way back I’m dropping off one of Dawn Crawford’s females who is now pregnant to Verdello.

I managed to catch a glimpse of the baby swallows today. I think this must be the best year we’ve had for them.

We are still waiting for the test results on the poorly mum. In herself she seems a bit better and is eating well but our main concern now is for her cria as she had just about dried up. At first the solution seemed easy and we had him pinching of another mum which worked briefly till she cottoned on and soon put him in his place. So we then tried holding her while he fed. Again this worked for a while but eventually she twigged again and just sits. So as not to upset things with her own cria we have abandoned that method. In the meantime we have been trying to get him to take the bottle, there was one point yesterday when he suddenly latched on and drained the bottle but today he doesn’t want to know. We’ve tried honey on the teat, just about everything. Very frustrating.

This is our latest cria born in the rain on Friday. Jess was on duty at the time and all went well. Jess is a Cambridge vet student who lives up the road and helps out on occassions. Felicia has called the cria Flamingo as she is very hopefull that she is a rose grey. We’ve haven’t managed to breed a grey yet . I suspect she’s a fawn though like her dad Little Legend.

We did a load of spit offs today with only one disappointing result. One of Sonaras girls sat, interestingly she scanned positive before her second blue tongue jab.

We have another brood of swallows in the barn. Different nest, different family and also camera shy but I’ll catch them out shortly.

The sun came out briefly yesterday and I managed to get this shot of our two suri boys shining in the light. It’s almost as though the rain has polished them. Just got to keep them out of the mud now.

Miranda, the vet from Calweton came around and checked Dalia over, took bloods and other samples but couldn’t find much wrong so will wait for the results. In the meantime we’re feeding her up on crushed oats and sugar beet and have given her a jab of Vit b. She seems perkier this morning. The other problem with her is that she has virtually dried up. We tried giving a bottle to the cria but that got spat out so we brought in one of our more laid back mums who has got plenty of milk and in no time he was sneaking over and pinching from her. So hopefully that will keep him going till the mum gets back to normal.