Shear amazement!

Following on from Wednesday nights late night arrival and late night blog I thought you might like to see a dry photo of Little Miss Irraquoys man, who we decided to call Layton, seeing as he was born late on; he is very nice, very very nice!

Shearing began bang on time at 8am prompt, James Dixon and his fantastic assistant Serena worked none stop and got through all the girls and the various boys we'd bought back from clients to get sheared.  I love having them back home for a few days, it's like having your family back home for the weekend.

Just as James was packing up for the night Amata decided to go into labour, she was well overdue at 360 days so it wasn't a major shock that shearing had set her off.  She is a maiden so things were rather tight.  After a lot of pushing and getting nowhere I applied some lube to see if that helped her get more than a centimeter of nose out.

After another half hour all we had was a pink nose and one foot, so it was time to offer more assistance.  Poor thing had a foot stuck, hence the lack of progress, so with the foot released I thought I'd leave her to get on with things herself.  It's always best not to interfere unless you have to.

It wasn't to be, Amata was making no progress and clearly needed some help.  Despite the cria only being tiny she really was struggling to get it out, so I helped him enter the world and despite having a very sore and slightly torn back and she loves him dearly, even if he did have an inside out ear and was covered in blood!

He's even sweeter now he's dry.

Then yesterday shortly after James had finished shearing part two (all the boys and the weanlings), and just after Phil and Jan had arrived from Castleside Alpacas to pick up Dillon, and just before mum and dad left for home Kimchee decided to fire out her cria in front of an excited audience.  I have never seen a head and legs appear so quick in all the years we'e been breeding alpacas!

She went on to produce a lovely brown girl, our biggest cria of the year so far at 10.5kg.

That only leaves 3 overdue girls now and another 6 over 330 days so plenty of action to come.  Meketaten and Kealani have plenty of milk and huge teats so doubt they will be much longer.