Griggs Country Store at Sticker near St Austell kindly invited members of the CCA to take trade stands to their Open Day last Saturday. Popham was joined by Llamaland and Rosecraddoc Alpacas. It was a little bit of a step into the unknown but wow ….what a success and what fantastic people the Griggs crew are. I generally shop for all our supplies at Mole Valley but would definitely change to Griggs if they were closer. I also checked out some of their prices on timber etc and they are much cheaper so I will go there for those big spending days you occasionally have to have. To add the icing on the cake we even managed to sell the three boys we took and delivered them after the Open Day.

I have posted some photos of our next generation of stud males. These were our Junior and Intermediate show from earlier this year and its really encouraging to see how well their second fleeces are coming through, a couple of them are beginning to look very smart, even if i say so myself.

Felicia and I are off to France on Wednesday to go to the French Alpaca Show at Vierzon. We’ve got three alpacas to show. An older boy who was reserve champion there in 2007 called Popham Columbus, at present he’s on stud duties in the Dordogne and hopefully he’ll go one better this time. Robin and Linda from Utopian Alpacas are taking two of our animals down for us, one of which is a gorgeous fawn Bulleyboy female suri who, according to Robin, will take some beating. The other is a white male huacaya who I haven’t seen for sometime so I’m not sure how we will do with him. Robin is in Brittany so we are going to pop in and see them before going on to Steve and Jayne at Quelvehin Alpacas. They need a tow as their car is broken so we’re going to take their trailer and alpacas down for them. Steve has a super white female huacaya sired by Alamo. I reckon she’s the best he’s ever done so we’ll be watching her with interest.

Watch this space next week to see how we have done.

Just reached a point where I am beginning to realise one of the drawbacks of leaving our mating season till the second half of the year. It has worked very well with regard to our alpacas staying on Popham but over the last few months we have sold quite a few females, some young and being mated for the first time and others with cria on the ground and coming up for re-mating. Obviously these females are sold subject to their pregnancy being confirmed before they are delivered. The majority are obliging and rejecting well but we have one proving difficult. Popham Eva, our best show suri for many years, probably ever has been sold along with Emma our other show winner. Emma is spitting like mad but Eva will not take and it is beginning to get very late in the season and I am beginning to run out of fingernails !!!!

Felicia says I worry too much !!

The pigs came back from Tideford abbatoir looking much more like the ones you see in Waitrose but tasting a whole lot better. We left them go a bit longer this time so they’ve got about half an inch of fat which seems to have worked well. Derek from O’Dell Alpacas came and collected his pig to get it into the freezer asap. Obviously we’ve kept the other one. I think I’ll get three in to fatten up next time.

Now that the cria watch season is over there seems to be so much time to do things. I did a mating trip today and was able to leave much earlier than normal. Passed Tim Hey of Inca Alpaca fame on the road, I didn’t see him but he spotted me and was soon on the blower checking up on what I was up to!!

You won’t believe it but we had our last cria of the year today and it was another girl, a fawn suri and all going fine. After the terrible start to the year it has turned out to be a good one in the end. We haven’t had to call the vet out for any deliveries, there have been a few worries like the loss of the early year prems, congested teats and one of the later mums just drying up for no obvious reason. ( We are still bottle feeding that cria by the way). The majority of the cria are doing well with their weight gain, there is only one that is a bit slow and has only put on 500gm in a week which is not too bad. Overall we are very happy with the year and feel we are learning to spot the problems earlier each time they occur but we realise the learning curve is still very much upwards.

After great trip golfing in Brittany its back home where the sun is shining and we have had yet another female cria on the ground. A delightful fawn suri. We really are being spoilt with some stunning suri cria this year. I’m tempted to get them all together in one field when the sun is out and see if I can get some really good pics. I might just do that sometime. In the meantime here are the latest four or five cria.

Felicia has granted me a travel visa for our yearly boys golfing trip to Brittany so a crowd of us are off on the ferry to Roscoff tonight. The weather forecast looks pretty good, lets hope the golf is the same!!

Back at home we had another girl yesterday. What a change around from earlier in the year. Only two more births to go for the year and then cria watch is over for another season. We’ve got one ongoing issue with a suri girl. I noticed she hadn’t put on any weight over the last week so checked mum over, she seems fine in herself but there just seemed to be a few drops of milk. Felicia has done a fecal egg test but nothing is showing up there. Just seems to have dried up a bit. We are topping the cria up with the bottle which she is guzzling down. Hopefully the mum will come right again and we won’t have a long term bottle fed.

Straight back into the thick of things yesterday after a great week away in Menorca. I must confess to having never even opened up my laptop whilst we were there. First thing yesterday was a very early cria birth, a typical Matador baby, hits the ground running. A beautiful white girl. Then last evening we had a surprise with another birth at about 6.30pm. This time it was a Verdello girl, probably light fawn this time but again very strong and full of beans. Somebody was obviously listening to my complaints about the lack of girls this year as apart from the two girls born yesterday there were another four born whilst we were away. That makes it nine out of the last eleven that have been girls which should level things for the year out nicely.

The weather wasn’t too bright yesterday so the pictures are a bit dull but the first one is the cutest of them all. he’s a mid brown Little Legend boy with the most fleece I’ve seen on a cria in a long time. I just thought I’d put the last picture in to make you jealous!!