It’s worth getting out of bed for mornings like this especially after the last few days. Our youngest group of cria are in the stable field and I took these pics at food time this morning. They do look all shiny and polished after the rain. Every time we bring them into the stable yard the cria charge over to the bank by the fence and munch away at the leafs, cones, moss, grass or whatever they fancy.

Things are getting back to normal, Tomorrow I’m off to pick up some females from Ian’s at Langaton Alpacas (these are Inca Matador females who have been mated to his male Don Juan,some Do juan females will be coming to Matador next year). Then on to Collabear Alpacas to collect one of my sisters animals who has been mated to their brown male. Meanwhile back on the ranch Felicia has Sarah coming to help with worming a group and then has two visits from people interested in starting out in alpacas.

It’s time to stop loafing around and get back into the swing of things. Everthing went well last week and many thanks to all those who sent their best wishes.

Started out yesterday in the freezing weather and boy did it rain. I went and checked on the animals just before it got dark only to find none of them using the shelters provided. Just sitting out in the pouring rain, I don’t know, you do wonder about their intelligence sometimes or perhaps it just doesn’t bother them. We noticed a couple of cria looking a bit slow so topped them up with some ADE, probably just cold but it won’t harm them. No chance of any photos.

After the encouraging comments made by Dr Vivanco regarding our young male Richard I thought I should put some pictures of him on the blog.  His sire is Irraquoy from the famous NWA Ltd Ruffo line. His dam is out of Alpine Brutus who boasts both Highlander and Hemingway in his background. On genetics alone Richard makes pretty impressive reading. His latest fleece stats ( May 2008) showed a micron of 17.1.

He is a gorgeous light fawn and should start work in the spring next year.

It was a rain soaked day yesterday while we delivered some alpacas up to their new home near Okehampton. Good luck to Jane and her new venture at Tudor Cottage Alpacas. ( check out her blog at www.tudorcottagealpacas.co.uk)

Hi there, this is Felicia doing the blog this weekend. Gary has asked me to do it for two reasons. Firstly this post is about the vets day we had here yesterday. This side of things has always been my main interest and secondly he has to go into hospital next week for a third ablation on his heart to try and put an end to these arrhythmias he has been getting over the last 12 years or so. So he is going to be quiet for a while and has asked me to run the blog.I therefore have to learn how to use it and technical things are not one of my strengths.

Yesterday  the vets arrived and we had a very busy, educational and enjoyable afternoon. There were two main sections. Nigel from BCF bought an assortment of scanners which were used on some of our animals by the vets under the supervision of Karen Meuller from Cambridge University vets school. The alpacas were obliging and stood still and had probes with gel and spirit rubbed along their abdomen so that the vets could learn to examine the organs. I found the sight of the peristalic movement of the intestine on the screen incredible!   Dalia our female who had lost weght and is anaemic was scanned and all the abdominal organs were functioning normally, which was a relief. After due discussion it was decided that she went into negative energy after having her cria. Then Dr William Vivanco from Peru examined and talked through confirmation and fleece characteristics of some of our youngsters. We were delighted with the fact that he thought Richard was a lovely young boy. It was great to have our own judgement confirmed by such an eminent person. In Dr Vivanco’s opinion Richard will make an excellent stud male and has the type of fleece that remain fine and soft as he gets older.

There was also comparison made between the vets floating sugar and my sinking salt method of counting fecal worm egg counts or FEC’s. Unfortunately, or fortunately really, we found so few worms that comparisons just couldn’t be made.

It was a real privilege to have these eminent vets visit us, listen to their technical discussions and in doing so pick up some valuable advice.

We’re beginning to get things ready for the Vets Day on Saturday. BCF are bringing along 4 of their scanners so we are choosing our “patients” for the vets to practise on. Then the guest speaker, Dr Vivanco from Peru will do an assessment of some alpacas so we’ll be getting the remains of last years show team out for him to look over. Then there is the farm tour with yours truly. We are also doing a comparison on two types of fecal egg counting. Felicia will do some samples using her sinking method to count the worm eggs, meanwhile one of the vets is bringing her gear along to test the same samples using the floating sugar solution method. We’ll see who finds the most eggs. Hopefully not too many!!

Someone I know well is a bit of a romantic and loves the pictures of the alpacas, how should I put it, being intimate. So this one is for you Peggy, I think the lady involved was rather taken by Alamo.

ps Have a good holiday and don’t crash the Alvis.

I’ve had a quiet spell today so i thought I’d get the camera out and sit in  the cria fields and see if anything happened. The sun shone a bit which helped. Some of the cria are coming up to weaning age and we’ll be moving  them on in the next few days which is always a stressful

time. Some really pine for their mums whereas others appear to be not in the slightest bit bothered. The majority of mums couldn’t give a dam!!

The busy period seems to be winding down now, there’s another mating trip tomorrow and probably the final one on Sunday and then we’ll call it a day for the year. Hopefully our policy at home will have worked whereby we have tried to concentrate the majority of the matings into a much smaller time frame. Hopefully we won’t have any going through the winter empty. We are still waiting for results on Dalia. Even with all the drugs and TLC she is loosing condition. Miranda, the vet is beginning to think much more serious things ie cancer.

The weekend after next we have the Camelids Vet Conference with us using our facilities. They are bringing a fancy new scanner and want alpaca patients to look at. Dalia will be in the front of the queue.

We have had a fantastic response to our next “Experience Day” on the 8th November and are already full so I’ll get another date sorted out shortly.

We had a busy day yesterday charging around Cornwall with the boys getting the last of the matings done. First stop was with Glen and Emma at Eden Alpacas. Glen is a tree surgeon and he has these fantastic tables made out of a five foot diameter beech tree. Anyway the sausages and chicken which were cooked up while the boys were busy went down very well as it was a bit chilly. Then on to Theresa at Rosecraddoc Alpacas where Little Legend met up with a lovely grey girl. Could be an interesting result that. Matador was also in favour and Theresa put him across a fawn huacaya hoping to get a suri. He hasn’t failed yet so fingers crossed. Vic, Theresa’s partner has a barn full of old tractors and bulldozers which he spends hours tinkering away on while Theresa minds her alpacas. Sounds like a good arrangement to me.

I haven’t had a chance to get out with the camera this week so I thought I’d put some more pictures of individual animals from the Open Day on the blog.

We had the vet back out again to have another look at Dalia. She is the female who suddenly lost an awful lot of weight about a month ago. At the time the vet could find no specific problems apart from the fact that she was a bit anaemic. Anyway after lots of TLC she still hasn’t really picked up and even though she does still have some milk we are bottle feeding her cria. So Miranda, the vet took more bloods and samples to look further into it. Meanwhile her cria who we called Federer is doing really well. It must be the Waitrose goats milk. He’s not too keen on the stuff from the Co-op.