Lego Rory

Thankfully the sun had shone today so Rory is back to drinking his bottle, he has also regained the weight he lost yesterday plus another 330 grams which is good. In fact all 5 cria that we weighed had very good weight gains, that nice lush grass is obviously doing wonders for their mums milk.

You may recall my young niece Faith took quite a shine to Rory whilst she was up visiting a few weeks ago. Well my brother and his family are on holiday down in Devon at the minute camping, as the weather is not great they have been playing with Lego, Faith wanted daddy to build Rory today!

Faith was obviously pleased with it because she made him send me a picture, so I thought I would share it with you, I'm sure you can see the likeness!!!!!

Bedtime bottle

Rory is being a bit of a pest at the minute with his bottle. When the weather is bad he doesn't seem to want it. The same thing happened when we had the last wet couple of days. It is quite odd, you would think he'd be more inclined to want a nice warm bottle of milk. I've even tried going out without my waterproof as I thought it might have been my coat he didn't like.

He had lost 90gms today, which bearing in mind he's only had one bottle from me in the last two days isn't as bad as I was expecting. He's drinking from Geena who does seem to have more milk this year than in previous ones. Hopefully his supper that he took tonight is the start of normal feeding again!

Poor Loki had a spit off job to do today, I did feel sorry for him I feel really mean when they don't get a girl at the end of it. Thankfully both Chiquita and Imala refused his advances so hopefully they are holding. Oonagh came over to say hello but she has another week to wait yet, we're hoping that she will be the last mating of the year for us. We try to get all our births complete by the end of August.

Well I must go and do some spinning as Carol is knitting Mary's black yarn quicker than I can spin it. I don't want to give her an excuse for stopping knitting!

Legends last cria of the year

It has been a really miserable day here, dull this morning then the rain arrived. It has been torrential most of the afternoon and the alpacas are all resembling drowned rats.

It's obviously not cold because they have been happy to sit out although I would have liked the mums with the youngest cria to take them off to get a little shelter.

Freyja who is a week old today and Minimus still have their the pajamas on at night (cria coats to most people), however I left on all day today because the forecast wasn't good. They have both had dry pj's on this evening, I could see some of the others wishing they'd been as lucky.

As the weather was bad I've been doing paper work and updates to the website. It's a never ending job and that was before I got an email from Carol saying she's knitted a couple more bits for me!

Finally I thought you might like to see Legend's last cria of the year, a white boy named Wheelhouse Ivory Star, born to Angelus, who we sold a little while ago to Pauline & Robert Cameron of Wheelhouse Alpacas. With the combined pedigree of Angelus who is from Jolimont Gianmarco and Legend of Spartacus who is from Peruvian Spartacus and Jolimont Commisario this chap should go far, Pauline informs me that his fleece is bright white with a lot of crimp already.

Many thanks for the photo and kind permission to share it with the world Pauline. We're looking forward to coming to see him!

To mate or not to mate?

As I mentioned yesterday we had a couple of matings to do today, Ursula and Geena were both keen to see the boys and dropped at their feet. The other two girls that needed 'spitting off' both ran a mile from the boys which is good.

I received an email from Angelus's new owner today to say that she had delivered her cria which is great news. Paul & I had only been saying over a cup of tea on the bench she shouldn't be long. I will ask permission to share the photo with you tomorrow.

Now for the quandary, do we or don't we mate Palm-Olive now or wait until the Spring. She has now decided that she would quite like to be mated and has become a bit of a flirt, which as you can imagine Golden Guinea is lapping up.

Palm-Olive is a 16 months old, well grown girl. Generally we don't mate our young girls until they are at least 18 months, although they are all considered individually so there have been a couple of exceptions to this unwritten rule.

Palm-Olive is from Accoyo Remarque, so as you can imagine has a very nice fleece. So the next question, if we decide to mate her, who do we use? Legend of Spartacus, our Supreme Champ who has Peruvian Spartacus and Jolimont Commisario in his pedigree or Gianmarco's Masterpiece who is from Jolimont Gianmarco with Jolimont Sculptor and Jolimont Encantador as Grand sires.

Both boys have produced us some stunning cria this year ..................... decisions, decisions. Palm-Olive is actually one of only two remain girls we have for sale. It is likely that these girls will be the only ones we have for sale for the foreseeable future.

A wise choice

This morning Katia had an appointment with Gianmarco's Masterpiece, her very lucky new owners had chosen him to cover her this year. A very wise choice in my opinion and Marky was certainly impressed, he enjoyed every minute of it.

Whilst this mating was going on rather surprisingly Ursula decided to sit, she was mated almost a month ago and has been spitting off since. She too was mated to Marky so he will have another rendezvous with Ursula in the morning after he has done some spit offs. We like to try and give the boys a girl at the end of spit offs.

It has been a lovely day so I have been able to get Carol's knitting stash from yesterday washed dried and even photo's taken to they can be put in the shop. I'm determined it is not going to get as out of date again as it took ages to get back on top of it.

Whilst I was out with the camera Casiphia, Legends first born cria came up to say hello, she is usually one of the ones hanging back so it was nice for her to come to me.

This evening the younger cria have been weighed, all are doing well and heading in the right direction which is good. It is interesting to see how some of the girls milk qualities clearly differ, as with previous years Gabby, Mary and Kate's babies have piled on the weight whilst Imala and Irraquoys are slightly slower than our herd average gain.

That's the way to do it

After the morning feeding routine Paul & I headed off to the MetroCentre, he desperately needed some new trainers for the Great North Run. We both detest shopping with a passion and have been putting it off for I don't know how long.

We'd been using the excuse we couldn't leave in case someone gave birth, but with all our babies now safely on the ground we couldn't play that card anymore. As he is back to work on Monday we had to do it today. Job done we were back home as quick as we could be!

Rory's eye continues to improve and he has been starving today, drinking every bottle down in one without stopping, I may up his ration slightly tomorrow but I don't want to give him too much as Geena does have some milk and that will be much better for him.

I thought you might like to share another chase me shot, this time we have two of Legends cria at the front, in order Niveous (from Irraquoy), Casiphia (from Veruschka), Pearson (from Ursula and Guinea) and the two brown you can just see are Layla and Meketaten.

Whilst we were going through the 140 photo's we look on Monday, we found this one Paul managed to capture of Oonagh showing Freyja how this standing malarkey works.

Carol & Dave popped over this afternoon with more knitting, I told you the shop wouldn't be up to date for long didn't I! They were also kind enough to bring us some of their home grown veggies; they are far too good to us.

Whilst they were here I also established why Dave is always finding nice wood to make my buttons from, Carol let out one of their little secrets!!! I will say no more than that or she may kill me.

I've done it

Firstly I must apologise about last nights photo, I just keep getting a big photo of Rory's eye when I try and enlarge the second photo. All very odd I can't get it to enlarge at all. Looks like you will have to just check them out on the meet the herd pages when I've updated them, bear with me, I'm working on it!

I've been trying without success for a while now to get the on line shop up to date, well this evening I have finally succeeded. Well that is until I next see my mum and Carol as I know both have been busy knitting!

Next is Meet the Herd section, Paul has kindly uploaded all the photo's but leaves me to do the words bit.

The main herd are certainly enjoying their new grass, this afternoon after stuffing their bellies full everyone was stretched out sunbathing, until that is Gabby decided it was time for everyone to move. She does like to keep the herd on the move. Alice and Kazuo were having none of it though and stayed put!

Rory's eye continues to improve, the swelling is reducing and he has it fully open again now.

The rain has arrived this evening so no doubt the boys will be fighting over the shelter and the girls will have headed to the trees for shelter. They seem to like it better under them that going in.

Passing with flying colours

When I went out this morning I was greeted by a very sore and sticky eyed Rory, the poor chap looked like he'd been kicked in the eye. Thankfully his eye is ok but it is very swollen and rather sore.

This photo was taken at lunchtime, by which time after being bathed a few times the swelling was beginning to go down. Hopefully with bathing and eye drops he will be back to normal in no time.

We have had the vet round today to carry out some vet checks on the two girls we have sold and their cria. All passed with flying colours as we would expect, these are two cracking girls with fabulous cria at foot. Sam, our vet was very impressed with the condition scores of both girls especially Alice as he thought Kazuo was 'very well fed'!

This was before the girls got on the new grass, we had been waiting for the vet to come before we moved them as we know what Katia is like and there is no way she would leave the lush grass for a few days.

The youngsters have been chasing round like crazy in their new field. I did manage to get a video but I think it must be too large to upload on the blog as it's not working - I'll get Paul to put it on YouTube and post the link so you can see it.

I caught 12 of the 14 cria in one photo, hopefully you will be able to enlarge it as I have labelled everyone, I know you liked it when I did that last time!!