Thursday 16 February 2012

A girlie update

Thank you for all your lovely comments last night, its nice to know that I've been missed.  I really missed blogging sometimes; other times it has to be said I had far too much on my mind.

I thought I would update you on the girls tonight. Just a few days into their new home the alpacas got snowed on, as you can see the girls didn't seem to notice.  After the amount we had last year they just saws this as a dusting I think and carried on hunting the nice new grass rather than settle for the hay.

Thankfully it was soon gone and the main herd have been able to enjoy the nice grass which will actually be our hay field.  This is the view we have of the girls from our patio - not that there will be much sitting on that for a long time yet!

Mary our black Chilean import girl has her coat on this year, we thought as we were moving slightly further north and higher up she may appreciate it as she does feel the cold in winter.  Her registration details put her at 8 years old but looking at her teeth and arthritic movement we think she is much old but her fine fleece made her appear younger at screening.

There are 25 females and 3 youngsters in this field, soon to be 25 as hopefully the last of the cria will be weaned this weekend.

We have tried to make the move as least stressful as possible for everyone, especially the pregnant girls, as many of you will know stress can be a cause of abortion.  We haven't actually had any of the girls scanned this year however many of them are hopefully pregnant to seven different sires.

Sadly we have had one girl, Imala abort her pregnancy.  She was at 175 days and was carrying the first offspring from our home bred Fawn Champion Barnacre Sandstorm.  Thankfully Imala is ok so we will now leave her until the spring and re mate her then.

Our first cria are due in April and two of the girls are already looking rather swell, I have seen babies moving round inside too which is always nice.

The final picture to give you a bit of perspective of our farm layout, this is the view the boys have of the girls, I took this when feeding one morning.

5 comments:

Unknown said...

Now that was a misleading title...I thought that you had got into shoes and handbags whilst you had been off line ;))

Shirley said...

It's all looking great and really expansive - you'll need binoculars to keep a check on all the animals! Shirley & Robbie

Rosemary said...

What a wonderful place! Sitting on the patio watching your animals - fantastic!!

Andrew said...

Welcome back. We did miss your updates. Nice pictures of a great place.

Zanzibah Alpacas said...

Great to have you back....and lovely photos...binoculars...required indeed !.....I can't believe that you have any time...to sit on that patio !.......Jayne