Tuesday 4 November 2008

Good & bad news today

It's been a really mixed day of emotion today. We had the vet coming out to carry out a couple of pregnancy scans on two of our maidens and also give those not already vaccinated their BTV8 jab.

First up was Ursula for scanning and here came the biggest disappointment, the vet couldn't find any foetus. She is supposed to be pregnant to our very impressive brown stud Golden Guinea, I'm hoping against all hope that the vet has this one wrong - well he did once before. He has quite large hands so doesn't like to go in too far with the rectal probe as the girls get that bit further on.

I'm going to leave her a few days and carry out another spit off and see what happens, if she's still spitting they we'll have to get the vet back out again. By then surely something will show transabdominally; our vet likes the girls to be about 3 months gone to do TA scans.

Thankfully things went according to plan with Oonagh; fantastic, marvelous, superb, there it was a tiny paca baby growing nicely! Oonagh was not amused at this scanning lark mind you, and I got covered in green spit - thanks Oonagh. On this occasion under the circumstances I let her off. The vet thought it was funny until I pointed out she'd got his back also!!

Oonagh is certainly her mothers daughter, Sam (the vet) noticed the resemblance also. Hopefully like her mum she will provide us with text book birthings and some lovely cria. She is pregnant to the Supreme Champion EP Cambridge Samson, thanks again for everything Rob & Les.

I've been really worried about giving everyone their BTV8 vaccine having heard a real mixed bag of comments. With the amount of livestock we have in this part of the world and the risks involved we had no choice but to vaccinate. Fingers, toes and everything else crossed everyone will be ok.

Finally, the quad is fixed!!!!!!!! Manual poo cleaning was a nightmare so normal service is resumed and I will be able to give the paddocks a thorough clean again now. I did start today but now the nights are pulling in so quick I ran out of light.

2 comments:

Patou Alpacas said...

For what ir's worth Debbie we vaccinated all 28 alpacas here and we haven't noticed a single side effect. I know some people have but we observed (and we did watch) nothing out of the ordinary.

Debbie, Barnacre Alpacas said...

Thanks Mark, you just worry dont you - well I do! One of the cria is very stiff this morning but other than that everyone seems fine.