Sunday 19 June 2011

Not quite ready to fly the nest (Paul)

If you follow our Twitter (text follow BarnacreAlpacas to 86444 for free messages about what we are up to or click here https://twitter.com/#!/BarnacreAlpacas) then you will know that we have been busy bees today.

Up at 6am, well who wants a Sunday lie in anyway, apart from my father-in-law, mother-in-law, brother-in-law, sister-in-law, niece-in-law.  Hmm snory bunch.

Anyway, after making the flask, packing the food, car and trailer it was only fair that I woke up to and got dressed to join Debbie for our day out 'n' about.

It was a quick dash over to pick up three of this years young boys, Ochre, Pearson and Minimus.  We then headed off to Rothbury for the CAMPS show (http://www.coquetdale.net/rothbury/camps.html).  We were really lucky with the weather with just a brief shower half way through the day and the good folk of Rothbury really warmed to the visiting crew from Barnacre Alpacas.

Our day was put under some strain early on when we noticed that the swallows nest in the alpaca's trailer had 3 very young chics in! They couldn't have been more than a day or so old as the bits of egg shell were still there. Debbie and I really love our nature and immediately put our thinking caps on - time to pull out the alpaca fleece - we use it for bird nesting material and despite having no food (I tried really hard to catch a couple of gnats 'on the wing' but they are fast little blighters) we returned the trailer at the end of the day with the chicks still alive.  The adult swallows flew straight in the trailer as soon as we parked it - fingers crossed!

I tried to get a photo of the adult swallows, but they were too quick. I did take a snap of the chicks in the trailer - amazing!  We will keep you posted of their progress over the coming days.  What will we do when the trailer needs to be moved again??!!

1 comment:

Apple Vale Alpacas said...

Good work Paul - gives new meaning to the phrase, 'mobile home'!