Alive and kicking

Sorry for the lack of blog post and thank you to those of you who have been in touch to check that we’re ok. Yes we are ok, I've just very busy, but have continued to tweet (you can follow us @BarnacreAlpacas) as I can do that whilst walking round the place!

I really can’t believe it was October when I last blogged, I’m ashamed.  Many nights I've sat down to write a blog but either fell asleep over the computer or started doing website updates. There is so much to tell you I’m not sure where to start.

Yesterday we celebrated our 8^th birthday, the alpacas got lots of bonus veggies and I got treated to a bottle of Prosecco; thanks Lizzie and we even saved Paul a small sip!!

Last year we had our best ever year for knitwear sales and for the first time ever I went into the new year with a long order list of special commissions, so the knitting needles are still smoking!!

Like most other people we have mud, mud and more mud, I've never known it so bad, the alpaca are so dirty I’m not sure they will ever recover!  The boys are absolutely filthy and the girls have mud dreadlocks!  

Ankha here not only likes to paddle backwards and forwards through the mud she likes to roll in it too!

At least the snow gave us a bit of a change from brown to white…….

And the girls are soon in the minute it starts to snow (or rain!); they’re not daft!

Oscar and Nelson who were featured in some of my last blogs are doing well, I’ll tell you more about them specifically later, sadly the same can’t be said for little Black Betty who I mentioned in my last blog, she continued to lose weight and despite being bottle fed and put on a drip towards the end she lost her battle with life. 

We've now weaned most of last years cria and I've already sold some of them, and as you can imagine already regretting agreeing to sell some of them!  They are currently being halter trained and adjusting to life without mum which I have to say is going very well, in fact I think with one exception they have hardly noticed they have left!

I don’t think the same will be said for the next few to wean because some of them have been having a bottle.  Pixie and Stella have been getting a milk top us as their mums don’t have much milk and Arty (work of Art) has been fully bottle fed since the death of his mum Cara just before Christmas, which was very sad, she suffered a Colonic torsion. 

Arty is such a sweetie, he likes his speedibeet too….