No sooner had I posted the last blog and gone outside to enjoy a bit of the long overdue sunshine when two of the battleship shaped females mentioned in the last blog went into labour. Obviously they had been waiting for the sunshine to appear. Good result as well, both girls, one a white suri out a brown female and the second a gorgeous little fawn female huacaya.

We had a visit from Paul Helps (of poo-picker fame) and his young son Thomas so the two new arrivals have been named after Thomas’s sisters, Alice and Lucy.

Another week has passed, no more cria to report though we do have a couple of females in the birthing field who are making very good impressions of battleships when looked at from behind. Mind you who can blame them with all the rain we’ve had. Couldn’t believe it yesterday while watching the cricket being played in glorious sunshine whilst it was pissing it down outside. Bet the aussies were praying for a bit of that rain.

We are away to Menorca for a week on Friday leaving tracy and Victoria at the helm. The pregnant mums are probably waiting for then so as to keep them really busy. We are actually planning, and this is really sad, to take the laptop with us so that we can use the free time to get our sales and stud pages up to date.

An alpaca baby that is…..at last, and it’s a little girl. This has taken over two years but finally the alpaca, called Penelope, that Tracy bought at an auction in a moment of insanity has given birth to a gorgeous white (with spots of course) girl. She hasn’t named her yet but i have heard Dotty mentioned. I hope not!!

Good news on the rejected cria front, they’re out with the rest and doing well on their own and Monsoon has taken to the job of motherhood well. It was a worry for a while though.

Finally another competition, anyone prepared to guess the result of Camouflage’s latest conquest at Rosecraddoc Alpacas near Liskeard.

Firstly we are making good headway with the new cria that was rejected after birth. Monsoon, the mum will let her suckle for short periods before walking away. On Tuesday we dabbed her head and tail with essence of vanilla and also put some around Monsoon’s nose. After this things improved greatly during the day but have turned slightly worse since so we may redo the vanilla again tomorrow.

Colin Ottery stopped by and sheared Camouflage yesterday and I must say some alpacas do definitely look better shorn.

We had a gorgeous fawn girl born on Sunday to a maiden. She is big and strong and the female struggled quite a bit. The cria was up and off in no time but we think that the shock of everything put the mum off and she completely rejected the cria. As soon as she made any attempt to feed the mother would kick and scream and charge off to the other side of the field. So what to do, we have penned mum and cria on their own and fortunately the cria is taking the bottle well. By holding mum and then putting the cria underneath to suckle things seem to be getting a bit better and I think , or hope, give it a few more days and she may suddenly realise that this gorgeous little thing is hers and switch on to motherhood. Fingers crossed.

There can’t be many alpacas that have achieved that but our light fawn suri girl Popham Finesse (Inca Matador) managed just that. Firstly she cracked North Devon on Wednesday and then Honiton on Thursday. Ferren won the brown huacaya championships at both shows as well. I didn’t get to North Devon as I had to work so Felicia and Jan took the team up in the mud. They had to be towed in but it remained dry during the day. The best thing about the day was collecting all the money!! What a lovely show. My daughter Victoria and I did the Honiton show. She looked much better in the ring than I would have done, not that this would have swayed Ian Waldron’s decisions in any way whatsoever. Never crossed my mind….honest!!

Well spotted Rolf and I suspect the genetics are those you are probably very familiar with. The sire of the cria in the picture is our stud male Ambersun Verdello, an Auzengate boy and the dam is Popham Cheyenne, a dark fawn Jolimont Warrior girl. ( Thats right, all Ambersun). Her grand sire is Auzengate, so this is one of our attempts at line breeding and we are very pleased with the result as the cria is showing great potential. Fingers crossed. Don’t tell Chris but I have sent Cheyenne to EP Cambridge The Comandante this year. He’ll have a fit. Our other Warrior girl Compass Yvette, we will mate to Cambridge Richard ( see our stud page). If Chris should read this he will turn apoplectic. Yvette’s cria from last year is showing potential, he’s by Benleigh Golden Flame (an Inti boy), I haven’t shown him as he is only just beginning to grow having been very slow. He has a beautiful soft fleece and hopefully will come into his own with time.

This weeks show results to follow……..

The rain is back with a vengeance this morning so we now have mud on the mud, not vey nice at all. Thank goodness for the quad. I had a ride in a mule last week, very impressive and I reckon one would help Felicia get around the place a whole lot more comfortably but she doesn’t quite see it from my point of view yet. I’ll have to work on it!! We’ve had three more boys in a row, a black huacaya, a white suri and yesterday a brown huacaya. All doing well but our boy/girl count is shocking this year coming in at 13/4. Not very good at all.

Two shows to go to this week hopefully. North Devon on Wednesday and Honiton on Thursday. I hope the judges are not too strict about fleece length as we’ll struggle having sheared much later this year.

I’ll get some photos of the latest three when things dry out but here are some I took over the weekend of the others.