This morning I had a mating to do and a few spit offs. Golden guinea had a couple of girls to do pregnancy spits with and Legend had an appointment with one of the ladies. Good news for everyone except Guinea was his two girls spat so he had to watch Legend doing his stuff.
This did not go down well at all, Guinea was so revved up refused point blank to leave the girls field and go back this own. It took mum and I an hour to get him to leave the girls, we pushed and pulls, bribed him and in the end I left him and took Legend off in the hope he would think that he had another job.
It worked in the end but it was hard work. You may recall me saying he didn't want to leave earlier in the week but today he was so naughty.
Oonagh is really getting grumpy now with anyone (with the exception of me and Paul). She still has about three and a half weeks to go but is so large I'm not sure she will last that long. Her mum and grandma have always had their cria quite early so I think she is going to follow in that trait.
Friday, 31 July 2009
Thursday, 30 July 2009
I can see the floor
I have been having a major tidy up in my work room/studio today. It has been a complete mess in there for a while now, what with one thing and another I'd lost control of it - thankfully Paul doesn't stray into there; it's my space!
Following on from shearing there were bags of fleece everywhere, not to mention all the boxes of knitted stock, felting paraphernalia and show stuff. You can now see the floor and almost everything is reorganised. I will finish it off tomorrow, honest Paul.
My parents arrived this evening, mum bought some more knitwear for me so I will have to get the shop updated. There are already some outstanding alterations to do and I have sold a couple of items on line this week so there is plenty to do. Paul is usually the website man but he is so busy with other things it looks like I will have to add it to my job list.
Since I started topping up Heidi with the bottle she is coming on tremendously. She runs to meet you when she sees the bottle and is happy for anyone to feed her which is away good. This even my dad gave it to her then supper it was mums turn.
Finally, just for Jayne's benefit your rosettes are on there way to you!!!
Following on from shearing there were bags of fleece everywhere, not to mention all the boxes of knitted stock, felting paraphernalia and show stuff. You can now see the floor and almost everything is reorganised. I will finish it off tomorrow, honest Paul.
My parents arrived this evening, mum bought some more knitwear for me so I will have to get the shop updated. There are already some outstanding alterations to do and I have sold a couple of items on line this week so there is plenty to do. Paul is usually the website man but he is so busy with other things it looks like I will have to add it to my job list.
Since I started topping up Heidi with the bottle she is coming on tremendously. She runs to meet you when she sees the bottle and is happy for anyone to feed her which is away good. This even my dad gave it to her then supper it was mums turn.
Finally, just for Jayne's benefit your rosettes are on there way to you!!!
Wednesday, 29 July 2009
I can't help it
Following on from my posting last night I will just share with you a few more of the super statistics we got back from Yocom-McColl and the dilemmas they cause.
Our best fleece came off Lualeni, who is Blossom's daughter from last year and fantastic. She is the finest we have produced so far and has a very impressive micron of 14.8. With a standard deviation of 3.1 and Coefficient Variation of 20.8% and only 0.4% over 30 microns this is certainly a girl to keep your eye on.
Hughie's second fleece stats also make interesting reading, with a micron of 18.9, SD 3.7, CV 19.8 and 0.6% over 30. He has very good conformation and a fabulous handle to his fleece too which has been commented on by both judges and the mini mill. All this said Hughie has a spot behind his ear and because of this I wouldn't use him over my own girls. If I had more and could take a chance on one I would give him a go. He has a lovely nature and would love to have his change with the ladies.
The boys we have for sale also scored very well, with Aodhfin having the finest fleece of the four. Horatio did very well for a black at 19 microns which beats Loki's at the same age. The dilemma here is should I be hanging on to Horatio for my own stud purposes??? I have a couple who are interested in him and his friends coming next week - they obviously have an eye for quality.
I do find fleece statistics and genetics fascinating so I can go on - sorry! But after all we are breeding alpacas for their fleece so the fibre statistics are very important.
Our best fleece came off Lualeni, who is Blossom's daughter from last year and fantastic. She is the finest we have produced so far and has a very impressive micron of 14.8. With a standard deviation of 3.1 and Coefficient Variation of 20.8% and only 0.4% over 30 microns this is certainly a girl to keep your eye on.
Hughie's second fleece stats also make interesting reading, with a micron of 18.9, SD 3.7, CV 19.8 and 0.6% over 30. He has very good conformation and a fabulous handle to his fleece too which has been commented on by both judges and the mini mill. All this said Hughie has a spot behind his ear and because of this I wouldn't use him over my own girls. If I had more and could take a chance on one I would give him a go. He has a lovely nature and would love to have his change with the ladies.
The boys we have for sale also scored very well, with Aodhfin having the finest fleece of the four. Horatio did very well for a black at 19 microns which beats Loki's at the same age. The dilemma here is should I be hanging on to Horatio for my own stud purposes??? I have a couple who are interested in him and his friends coming next week - they obviously have an eye for quality.
I do find fleece statistics and genetics fascinating so I can go on - sorry! But after all we are breeding alpacas for their fleece so the fibre statistics are very important.
Tuesday, 28 July 2009
Fantastic fleece stats
This morning started off with a mating with Golden Guinea and Gabby as promised last night. Both seemed happy for the reunion so hopefully she will take this time.
I left Imala in the pen with them to see if this encouraged her to sit because she has been giving far from convincing spit offs. She was having none of Guinea before he did the business with her best friend, but after the event was a totally different story and she sat for him. In fact she ran after us as we left the field which then meant I had to drag Guinea away!
I have finally received my fleece statistics back from the USA and boy do they make good reading. I was so pleased with them, our studs are fantastic; feast your eyes over these stats:-
Legend of Spartacus - 3rd fleece Micron 19.2 SD 4 CV 21 1.3%>30
His micron has come down from last year
Gianmarco's Masterpeice - 3rd fleece Micron 17.9 SD 3.7 CV 20.4 0.5%>30
Not only has Marky's micron come down the % over thirty has only increase by 0.1%
Golden Guinea - 4th fleece Micron 24.1 SD 6.6 CV 27.4 12.3%>30
Again this micron has come down as has the percentage over 30. Both David Barnett and myself were very surprised by last years results, we both thought Guinea's fleece was finer than the results said and this years test confirms this.
The rest of the test results made very nice reading but I wont overload you in one go, but lets just say I'm glad I've still not castrated Hughie!
I left Imala in the pen with them to see if this encouraged her to sit because she has been giving far from convincing spit offs. She was having none of Guinea before he did the business with her best friend, but after the event was a totally different story and she sat for him. In fact she ran after us as we left the field which then meant I had to drag Guinea away!
I have finally received my fleece statistics back from the USA and boy do they make good reading. I was so pleased with them, our studs are fantastic; feast your eyes over these stats:-
Legend of Spartacus - 3rd fleece Micron 19.2 SD 4 CV 21 1.3%>30
His micron has come down from last year
Gianmarco's Masterpeice - 3rd fleece Micron 17.9 SD 3.7 CV 20.4 0.5%>30
Not only has Marky's micron come down the % over thirty has only increase by 0.1%
Golden Guinea - 4th fleece Micron 24.1 SD 6.6 CV 27.4 12.3%>30
Again this micron has come down as has the percentage over 30. Both David Barnett and myself were very surprised by last years results, we both thought Guinea's fleece was finer than the results said and this years test confirms this.
The rest of the test results made very nice reading but I wont overload you in one go, but lets just say I'm glad I've still not castrated Hughie!
Monday, 27 July 2009
Legend of Spartacus gets a special treat
Thank you to all those very kind people who left comments, sent messages and called to congratulate Legend on his Supreme Champion win. I got very excited when I saw 10, yes 10, comments on my last blog post.
As a special treat for the superstar he got so see a very special lady, Little Miss Irraquoy this evening. You may remember she gave birth just over two weeks ago now to our best cria of the year to date, Barnacre Sandstorm who is thriving and already eating hard feed.
LMI is a bit of a minx and has given us the run around with previous mating so hopefully this year will be different. Although saying that she did play rather hard to get with Legend spitting initially and then giving the old screech during the mating. She only allowed him to work for 6 minutes before throwing him off, he got back on but she soon threw him off again. Hopefully she had long enough, but time will tell.
Gabby was sat the other side of the pen so she obviously didn't take on her first mating so I will get Guinea back on the job tomorrow which will please him. He was far from happy when I took Legend and Gianmarco off this evening; he obviously knew what was going to occur.
As a special treat for the superstar he got so see a very special lady, Little Miss Irraquoy this evening. You may remember she gave birth just over two weeks ago now to our best cria of the year to date, Barnacre Sandstorm who is thriving and already eating hard feed.
LMI is a bit of a minx and has given us the run around with previous mating so hopefully this year will be different. Although saying that she did play rather hard to get with Legend spitting initially and then giving the old screech during the mating. She only allowed him to work for 6 minutes before throwing him off, he got back on but she soon threw him off again. Hopefully she had long enough, but time will tell.
Gabby was sat the other side of the pen so she obviously didn't take on her first mating so I will get Guinea back on the job tomorrow which will please him. He was far from happy when I took Legend and Gianmarco off this evening; he obviously knew what was going to occur.
Saturday, 25 July 2009
Supreme Champion
I'm thrilled and extremely proud, so much so I can hardly type!!
We had a great ribbon haul, with 8 out of out 10 fleeces coming away with ribbons. Not only did we get ribbons, there was more. Our elite white stud Legend of Spartacus was first placed white adult, also the Adult Champion and went on to win Supreme Champion! How impressive is that, Rob Bettinson who was the BAS judge was very impressed with his fleece and rightly so, it is very special.
As you will be aware I've had a busy week in the build up to the Scottish National Fleece and Composite show held at the Border Union show in Kelso over the last couple of days.
Barnacre took part in both the fleece and composite show, the fleece show had fantastic support with just short of 150 fleeces from all over the country from Cornwall to Aberdeenshire (that's you Jayne!).
We had a great ribbon haul, with 8 out of out 10 fleeces coming away with ribbons. Not only did we get ribbons, there was more. Our elite white stud Legend of Spartacus was first placed white adult, also the Adult Champion and went on to win Supreme Champion! How impressive is that, Rob Bettinson who was the BAS judge was very impressed with his fleece and rightly so, it is very special.I will fill you in with the full results tomorrow as I'm exhausted but just had to share this exciting news with you tonight.
Wednesday, 22 July 2009
New prices and a walk along the beach
I ran out of time for blogging last night, I had all good intentions but ran out of time as we decided to go to the local pub quiz seeing as Paul was on holiday. Incidentally we didn't win!
Yesterday was spit of testing and great news all the girls spat off although Imala was still not the most convincing but I don't want to force her down. Time will tell on her. Geena is still not sitting and is showing no signs of imminent birthing either so that's a job for the vet I think. I'll have to get him out next week.
Following direction from EP Cambridge we are pleased to announce revised prices for some of the pregnant girls we have for sale. In fact there is a whopping £2,300 reduction in the package price of the 3 stunning Aussie girls.
One of these girls, Alice, is carrying the first ever Gianmarco's Masterpiece offspring. With the fantastic genetics from both Alice and Marky this is very exciting indeed.
Today we have had a bit of a day off and had a drive over to the coast. We had a lovely walk along the beach, fish and chips and I even got an ice-cream!! We thought we'd have a bit of a jolly as it's all go with Kelso fleece judging tomorrow and Friday and the halter classes on Saturday.
Yesterday was spit of testing and great news all the girls spat off although Imala was still not the most convincing but I don't want to force her down. Time will tell on her. Geena is still not sitting and is showing no signs of imminent birthing either so that's a job for the vet I think. I'll have to get him out next week.
Following direction from EP Cambridge we are pleased to announce revised prices for some of the pregnant girls we have for sale. In fact there is a whopping £2,300 reduction in the package price of the 3 stunning Aussie girls.
One of these girls, Alice, is carrying the first ever Gianmarco's Masterpiece offspring. With the fantastic genetics from both Alice and Marky this is very exciting indeed.
Today we have had a bit of a day off and had a drive over to the coast. We had a lovely walk along the beach, fish and chips and I even got an ice-cream!! We thought we'd have a bit of a jolly as it's all go with Kelso fleece judging tomorrow and Friday and the halter classes on Saturday.
Monday, 20 July 2009
Fleece weighing and flat tyres
Paul is on holiday from his day job this week so he is on alpaca duties full time with me.
Today was a good one to start the week, we have been weighing all the fleeces that have been entered into the Scottish National show at Kelso this weekend. Jonathan Russell is organising the fleece show and had asked me for a helping hand with the weighing.
We got quite a production line going, me weighing whilst the boys (Paul & Jonathan) did the recording, one manual and one on the computer - double whammy just in case of technical problems with the system we didn't want to lose all the data and have to start again.
The fleeces will be judged on Thursday and Friday as we have almost 150 entries. I have come home with a car load to take along for judges as there is no way they would all fit in one car. I'm not quite sure how we are going to fit them in the vehicles when we are taking animals as well on Saturday!!
Today was a good one to start the week, we have been weighing all the fleeces that have been entered into the Scottish National show at Kelso this weekend. Jonathan Russell is organising the fleece show and had asked me for a helping hand with the weighing.
We got quite a production line going, me weighing whilst the boys (Paul & Jonathan) did the recording, one manual and one on the computer - double whammy just in case of technical problems with the system we didn't want to lose all the data and have to start again.
The fleeces will be judged on Thursday and Friday as we have almost 150 entries. I have come home with a car load to take along for judges as there is no way they would all fit in one car. I'm not quite sure how we are going to fit them in the vehicles when we are taking animals as well on Saturday!!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
