New location for the hay bale

We have taken delivery of a new large round bale from our farmer friend Alan. As the last few have been put in the same place I thought it was time for a change. There is usually a gathering around said bale and as it is so wet it was getting a bit muddy.

We have moved it further along, Alan is great and kindly puts it over the fence for me onto a pallet which I then cover - much to Oonagh's annoyance. She spends most of her day trying to get her head under the cover. Why it tastes better straight off the bale rather than out of the mangers I don't know. In fact Oonagh doesn't like to get involved in food squabbles she would rather go without so that is probably why she tries her luck at the bale.

I have spent a fair bit of time in the field today with the girls and some of them are now starting to look very pregnant, particularly Molly and Aria. Willow is little and dumpy anyway so she never looks very different when heavily pregnant.

Tessa, one of our regular manure collectors came this afternoon to fetch some muck, she has a new allotment which she is going to grow willow on that she wants to cover in poo! Tessa weaves the willow and did me some fantastic spheres for bird nesting material a little while ago.

I have a new 'manure man' coming tomorrow so hopefully for a few hours at least I will be muck free!!!!!

Completion was short lived.

Another busy weekend draws to a close and the fencing is finished - well we thought it was.

We finally finished the latest fencing project mid afternoon and moved the lambs onto their fresh pasture as they had pretty much munched their grass down to nothing. By the time we had returned following a celebratory cup of tea and a biscuit Mia had already got out! That lamb has to be the naughtiest (and brightest) lamb ever to have roamed.

How on earth she managed to squeeze through the gap she found in the existing fencing is beyond me. At least it wasn't through a bit we had just erected. I had said to Paul I bet she wouldn't be in the field by the morning, but I did think she would last longer than an hour!

On the alpaca front, Gaussian has been a pest again today and I have had to 'encourage' him to take his bottles. I tried crushing some Camelibra Cria pellets in his morning bottles to see if that helps with the weight. We'll see what the vet suggests tomorrow.

Princess Mallika is a big girl now

The first job after feeding this morning was to weigh Gaussian, on the whole he has been quite good taking his bottle with just a couple of exceptions. Despite this, he has managed to lose weight again, I couldn't believe it, he is back below 15kg. I have the vet coming out on Monday so I will get him to have a look at him again.

Then we weaned Mallika, Duchess to her detriment produces extremely greedy cria who grow very quick and strip her of condition. So today was the day the Princess Mallika was going to become a big girl and leave her mum to join the other weanling's.

Duchess is very laid back and passes this trait on to her cria (with the exception of Blossom!), so neither mum nor cria seemed in the slightest bit bothered by the separation, despite the fact that Mallika spends about 50% of her time drinking from mum.

We thought it seemed a bit over the top to take the trailer down for one cria, so decided that we would try and move her on the quad. She happily sat on Paul's lap checking out the scenery whilst I drove - only a Duchess descendant could be this chilled.

This afternoon Barbara and Paul from Beckbrow Alpacas popped over. It was really nice to see them again, chat alpacas and rummage through a few fleeces. They own Legacy who is Golden Guineas dad, so they were able so see the sort of spectacular cria he produces.

Ladies that lunch!

I had a rare treat today and went out for a bite of lunch with some friends, it was nice to have a few hours off to treat myself.

The weather has been terrible again, what were nice fluffy alpacas are now wet dirty alpacas - I'm sure I attract the scruffy ones! We have had a mole invasion, there are mole mountains (they are too big to be hills) everywhere and the animals seem to love to roll in them.

'Scan'tastic

I had a busy morning helping my sheep farming friend Alan with his sheep scanning. I really enjoy helping him out, he's been such a help and support to me since we moved here it is nice to be able to give something back.

We weren't actually doing the field of ewes that included my two, but we went and fetched them in the 'sheep taxi' so they could be scanned with the first batch. Great news they are both in lamb and both having twins. Just got to wait three or four months for them to produce now!

The weanlings have been extremely energetic this afternoon, charging round and jumping about. They have all really come out of their shells since being weaned, even Sienna who was a real squealer initially is getting braver. I will try and start a spot of halter training with them soon.

Gaussian continues to be a good boy with his bottles, and I am still trying to encourage him to try some hard feed.

Gaussian adds a few grams

I was able to weigh Gaussian this morning and am pleased to report that he has put on a few grams since the weekend, only 160gms but at least he is heading back up which is the main thing.

He is now running with the herd to the troughs at feed time which is something he's never done, I had to go and fetch him from wherever he happened to be at meal times! He's not interested in the hard feed but at least he now comes under his steam to look. He actually sniffed the food voluntarily today so maybe, just maybe he is thinking it might be worth trying.

My latest hay bale is rapidly diminishing, it will be gone before the week is out. They are eating so much of it at the minute, our summer calculation for hay consumption over the winter was well out! It is the annual hay show at the beginning for February in a nearby village so we will go and buy some prizing winning hay there - until then I will be speaking to the nice local farmer Alan!!

Yarn at last!

Finally my yarn has arrived, I was beginning to wonder if I would ever see it. It was however well worth the wait, and I am very pleased with how it looks. I now can't wait to get the knitting needles out. I already have an order for a black peaked beret!

I got slightly concerned this morning, that the guzzling Gaussian had gone back to his old ways as he didn't want his breakfast bottle. Thankfully it turned out to be a little blip because he was interested in his lunchtime feed and then downed his tea in a matter of a seconds and wanted more.

Everyone else is looking happy despite the wet and windy weather we had overnight, the usual shelter dweller were all nice and dry but there were a fair few wet faces to greet me this morning. The sun has been out most of the afternoon though so the have started to dry out nicely again.

Where did that weekend go?!

I can't believe it's Sunday evening already and Paul has to go back to the day job again tomorrow and we didn't manage to get the fencing finished. Nearly there, the daylight hours just aren't long enough this time of the year.

George and his family (new manure collectors) arrived today with a 2 tonne trailer - great! We managed to get rid of lots of poo. We caused traffic chaos in Angerton mind you, we live on a single track road so the road was blocked for a little while and typically three vehicles wanted to get to the farm at the end of the lane.

We thought we'd earnt our selves a drink so headed to the Dyke Neuk pub for a quick one!