Bottles with a cuddle

My brother and his family have returned home this afternoon after a weekend visit. Faith, my young niece has become rather brave since their visit three weeks ago and is now happy to wander through the alpaca field on her own.

She has taken a particular fancy to little Rory, who my brother informs me is a racing car (apparently it's a childrens tv programme), he kept singing a song about Rory the racing car, but every time he tried to get past the the first line Faith kept correcting him "no, Rory alpaca daddy" .

As you can see Faith was happy to do the bottle feeds, under Pearson's supervision!

He was even happy to have a cuddle, he wasn't quite so sure about the kiss though, he thought there should have been milk in that little nose.

Once our company had gone I finished off cleaning the fields that my brother kindly started this morning whilst Paul cut and harrowed in readiness for the rain we had forecast, however the weathermen seem to have changed their minds now.

We also had a batch of spit offs to do, all but Gabby spat off, she dropped like a stone when she saw Guinea arrive, I'd not put her in the mating pen yet either and once she sits to be mated there is no moving her so I just let them get on with it and removed the rest of the girls and babies back to their main field. All expect Imala that is, who sat next to her waiting for her turn. She is actually due an outside mating from 2008 so she will have to wait a little while so we can take her and Geena at the same time.

All change

I'm please to say Katia has settled nicely into motherhood, and her daughter is looking good, she lost a few grams in the first 24 hours which is quite normal, although most of our cria have gained from day one this year.

Now she has given birth I was able to give Katia's nails a good trim, they were very long, I'm sure they must have been missed by the shearer as they were looking quite bad, I didn't want to upset her though until she'd had her baby. They are now looking much better and she was happy to let me do them which always makes life much easier.

At last Mimimus is not the lightest baby at Barnacre, he has overtaken the new arrival this evening and weighs a huge (for him) 8.16kg, that means in three weeks he has doubled his birth weight so I'm happy.

This morning we had a bit of a move round with the boys and youngsters on the rented land. We really needed to make use of the big field as this is the best grass we have at the minute. However this would mean that the young girls would be next to the boys and that would never work. Why does the grass always grow where you least need it.

So Guinea had to move down one stud strip and the other four big boys have moved onto the roadside stud strip, this means there is now an empty field between the boys, as Golden Guinea and Loki aren't getting on too well at the minute - they spend all day posturing to each other and it usually ends up in a fight. There is also a gap between Guinea and the ladies, he is still rather excited though.

It's a girl

Well that's another week over with, I can't believe where the year is going.

Today also saw the birth of another cria, this time a lovely solid white girl from Katia and Legend of Spartacus, Katia is one of the EPC girls we have for here for sale.

Katia is one of those girls who is happy to blend into the herd and keep her head down. She has clearly had her head down far too much when the other girls have given birth as things seemed to come as a bit of a shock to her.

In particular when it came to the afterbirth, she clearly had not known what was going on as once the balloon appears and she caught sight of it out of her eye she started screeching and running round in circles. She then managed to stand on it and continue to circle which caused the thing to burst and tear which caused more concern, I think she thought it was her baby!

Eventually she realised it wasn't her baby and she calmed down and began to enjoy motherhood.

I had a visit to the vet booked for the kittens injections this morning but I decided to change it to an afternoon appointment yesterday as I thought something may occur today - how was that for intuition!

Izzie & Tilly were very well behaved at the vets and are now fast asleep, she did say they may be a little drowsy. As I suspected Izzie has a hernia so that will get corrected when she is spayed at the age of 6 months.

Market research

Oonagh continues to be very grumpy, her shape has changed now and you can see the cria has dropped so things are definitely progressing there. Katia has had all sorts of bulges going on too so her baby is obviously on the move.

I have been doing a spot of 'market research' today with Margaret, Alan (farmer friends) wife which was nice. I can't really say much more than that at this stage but it has meant that very little has occurred back at home.

I did get to do a bit of spinning whilst I was cooking tea and this evening I have been sewing labels into the new knitwear.

I had planned to get some photos so that I could update the online shop but just as I had sorted some pieces out the heavens opened; not that I am complaining as the grass needs it. Unfortunately my Paca Poo bricks were out in the sun drying so I had to decide which stayed dry bricks or Mimimus and Minimus won!

Home time for my parents

All the new knitted stock has now been washed and is ready for labelling, I never relish that bit! Thinking of names for everything is getting really difficult now but I got there in the end.

My parents have gone home this afternoon, after mum had given Rory (Geena's baby) his bottle and fed the girls some carrots - they do get spoilt. Guinea is enjoying raspberries most evenings as we have some wild ones growing on the lane.

I'm not sure what Kate has been on today but this evening she was pronking round the field with the babies. She did however take a bit of a dislike to poor Wynfor who she was trying to stamp on when he sat next to her baby Ochre, who incidentally is a right lump these days!

Katia is now looking slightly closer to birthing however I still wouldn't be surprised if Oonagh beats her to it. Oonagh has a bag of milk and is following in her mums footsteps with huge teats.

Stock collection

I managed to finish cleaning and cutting the girls resting field today so once Paul got home this evening he whizzed round with the harrow. We have some rain forecast for tomorrow so if it arrives at least the field is ready for it!

Mum and I popped over to see Carol this afternoon, I took her some of the black yarn I have spun following Dave's carding sessions. We found her busy knitting in her summer house, I think Dave probably thought she would be doing a spot of weeding, but I won't tell if you don't.

She has been super busy with the knitting needles, I bought some lovely new pieces home with me. Mum has also been knitting whilst she has been here and I've told her she can't leave tomorrow until she's finished the pair of gloves she's currently working on.

The three youngest cria continue to gain weight nicely, Mimimus has now passed the birth weight of our 'normal sized' cria which feels good. He still looks really small though.

Oonagh now has a bag full of milk, she is at 327 days and is looking like she won't reach 347 which is when she birthed last year. The only other girl we have left to birth is Katia who is at 350 and not looking like she is in any rush.

Walking disinfectant bottle

I seem to smell like a walking disinfectant bottle today. After it's trip out at the weekend I had to clean out the trailer, so out came the mats and dividing gate and in went the disinfectant and pressure washer.

Bio security is something we are very strict with, so cleaning the trailer inside and out after after use is a must. As it was bin day I thought I'd do that too whilst I was at it!

Next on the list was to finish off cleaning and cutting the girls previous field so mum and I set about it. It took us ages but my dad did come out with a cup of tea and a biscuit for us, although he wouldn't let us have five minutes rest to drink it. Carol (my knitting friend) has been witness to my dad's slave driving so she will vouch for me.

We haven't actually finished the job off as we ran out of petrol so I will have to finish off once I have filled the patrol cans - all very annoying as the sooner it is cut and clean the sooner it will begin to recover.

It is Chiquita's 3rd birthday today. I can't believe it is three years since Willow (her mum) and I were in a panic in the field. Willow couldn't work out what on earth was poking out her back end and I was worrying it was taking far too long. Chiquita now has a baby of her own, little Minimus.

A treat for the girls and Mr Guinea

Well that is the end of another weekend and it's now August, can you believe it.

We have been busy moving animals on to fresh grass today, the rain we had last week has really helped to green things up and get the grass moving again. This morning after we had spat off Star, who spat off at poor Loki very convincing the recently mated maidens moved over the fence to the very lush looking fresh grass. This afternoon it was the turn of the main herd to get fresh grass.

As a treat for Mr Guinea being such a good boy at the show yesterday he got to mate Chiquita. Not until he had done four spit offs though, In true LMI style she went mad and proceeded to cover everything in a 3 or 4 meter radius green, including Paul, my mum and I!

Gabby our oldest girl doesn't believe she should have to do spit offs and glared at Guinea before he had got anywhere near letting us know that she had ovulated, as had Ursula and Veruschka.

Whilst Guinea and Chiquita were getting intimate Geena sat there hopefully. She only gave birth on Wednesday so she has a little wait yet but that didn't stop her asking.

Paul managed to get two of the resting fields cut in the hope they will thicken up as we had rain showers forecast. Unfortunately we had a very heavy down pout whilst I was cleaning the girls field and ended up soaked to the skin and didn't get it finished.

Paul was following me with the mover cutting the tall wispy bits of grass that they had left behind. I will have to finish that job off tomorrow assuming it's dry.

All the cria have been weighed today, with being at Kelso the last couple of days we hadn't done it. Everyone is growing nicely which is good, little Minimus has reached 7kg, that is a 75% weight gain in 2 weeks.