PregTector playing

After a wet start the sun came out and it turned into a glorious day. I have spent the morning digging out dock leaves in the girls field. I don't like spraying unless I am really forced and now the girls have eaten their grass down they are easier to get at.

Sadly I spent all morning at it and have only made a tiny difference, but a difference no the less and I will carry on.

This afternoon Hilary from Inglefield Alpacas came round armed with a new bit of kit. She has a PregTector Doppler pregnancy detector and wanted so will volunteers to practice on as she only has a couple of pregnant girls of her own.

I'd looked into these and scanners last year but I decided that I wouldn't be able to work out the noises so decided I'd stick to the vet scans. However Hilary is a GP so is used to listening to heartbeats and the like so she had an advantage. I struggled to find my own heartbeat!!

Oonagh, being a very well behaved and easy going girls was first up. The noise was fascinating, a loud whooshing and then we heard the two heartbeats Oonagh and her cria.

We managed to hear varying degrees of whooshing on the pregnant girls so tried a couple of non pregnant girls and the difference was amazing, they were so quiet. So whilst we didn't hear foetal heart beats on all the girls it was obviously there was fluid and with no arteries in range unless the alpaca is pregnant we were happy to agree with my vet on them.

I then decided it was the turn of Imala and Geena, both were scanned at the end of last year empty, however I was sure Imala was pregnant but not so sure about Geena as she spat off all last year despite not being pregnant. Both girls spat off last weekend.

Imala had a definite whooshing but when it came to the last one up, Geena we managed the clearest foetal heartbeat of all the girls. Fantastic, it looks like Geena is pregnant too.

I'm a little worried about one of my sheep today, poor Pepper who had the prolapse is not well. She didn't come running for her breakfast this morning until I went to fetch her and then this evening she wouldn't even come when I fetched her. I even took food to her and she didn't want it.

I think she may have an infection so I have given her some antibiotics and I have noticed that she doesn't have much milk so her two lambs have had a little bottle top up this evening. Fingers crossed Pepper will be feeling a little better tomorrow.