We had a busy weekend with Steve and Jayne Parker from Quelvehin Alpacas in Brittany visiting. As you do with other breeders, we had to go through all the animals checking fleeces and teeth and whatever else alpaca breeders look at and then go and discuss the merits of each animal over a few bottles of red. They have a beautiful property near Pontivy with two stunning gites which I am happy to recommend to anyone.

Hence the reason why the blog has been a bit quiet since we lost Floppsy last week. I have posted the latest picture of Camouflage sent from New Zealand. He has just been shorn and I reckon he looks great!!!!

He arrives next week so Felicia and I will be waiting expectantly at Heathrow. I can’t wait to see the other breeders faces when this “spotty” alpaca emerges amongst their beautiful whites and blacks. “Mine’s the spotty one” I’ll yell.

I’m sorry to say that Floppsy didn’t come back from the vets today. They had a look at her joints while she was under anaesthetic and they were in a pretty bad shape which meant that even if they had managed to clear out the infection she would probably never have walked properly. So the decision was made. Poor thing, she was a real fighter.

Floppsy, the little premature cria is struggling I’m afraid to say. She has developed a condition called joint ill. Apparently this is something a lot of premature animals get especially lambs and is very difficult to treat. Being premature her immune system is low even with all the colostrum she had from her mum and the frozen stuff she has picked up an infection that has got into all her joints which are now very swollen and puffy. Unfortunately also very painful so she is hardly moving. The vets have given her strong painkillers and antibiotics with the possibility of taking samples from her joints on Monday to find a more specific antibiotic. So it’s all fingers crossed at the moment. At least she is gaining weight but that is all the bottle feeding Felicia is doing.

We managed to avoid most of the snow in our own little micro-climate here at Popham but we have not avoided the rain. Both our routes in and out of Popham were flooded last night with some motorists who aren’t familiar with the road not daring to cross the flood. Fortunately I know the road so gallantly lead the way over. One of these days I’ll get it wrong and all you’ll hear is everyone muttering “prat”.

Tracey has sent some photos from sunny New Zealand so I thought I’d post some of those to cheer us all up.

I’m afraid to say we haven’t been so lucky with the second cria of the year. Gingernut, the second female we brought down early as she always has premature cria went into labour this morning bang on 5 weeks early again. This time we were ready and everything went well with the delivery and she produced a dark brown boy weighing just under 5 kg. Unfortunately he only lived for a couple of hours, his lungs didn’t get going properly even with the steroids we managed to get from the vets. We’ve managed to milk Gingernut and have saved  the colostrum which will go into the freezer.

The other premature cria is doing ok, I won’t say fantastically as she is still very slow. We have discovered one problem. She is only taking milk from the back two teats which is causing the front two to become very hot and sore so we have cleared those two out and got things flowing properly again. Bonny has had some antibiotics and seems more settled so hopefully the baby will feed from all four from now on.

I haven’t said much about the little premature cria we have nicknamed Floppsy as the last time I mentioned how well she was doing seemed to be the kiss of death. I went to check on them on Sunday morning and she was completely flat, I thought she was a goner. I called for the senior partner, Felicia, who did all the right things good mothers do and got her going again. We tubed her a couple of times that day and she has gradually got stronger and is back suckling from mum but we are still topping her up. Her weight has gone up by 200 gms in the last couple of days and her ears have straightened out. Perhaps we can start thinking of a proper name for her……fingers crossed.

I promised Freddy and Millie I would put some pictures of them on the blog so here they are.

At the moment Cornwall is closed down except for us, we’ve had very little snow and what we have had is already melting. Maybe we’ll get more later.