Kelso revisited

We are still glowing from our success at Kelso and have really appreciated all your congratulations, thank you. 

One of the most important classes of the show is Sires Progeny, this shows the sires ability to pass on his positive phenotype (physical characteristics), and genotype (his genetics) to his off spring.  We had entered both Legend of Spartacus and Golden Guinea.

We had a superb result here too, coming away with first place for  Legend, who the judge said there wasn't a cigarette paper between his three progeny, Casiphia, Niveous and Wynfor.  Golden Guinea came second with Meketaten, Lady Godiva and Lavender-Bee's Tatiana.  Completing the line-up in third were some wonderful greys who the judge, Rob Bettinson was very impressed with from Sudell Alpaca's Blue Circus.

Thank you to whoever took this photo for me (sorry I was so excited I didn't see who took it!).

As a bit of a celebration we have decided to do a special offer on our stud services for a limited time only.  We are very proud of what our boys have produced and are happy to share their success, subject to strict bio-security conditions.  We have progeny from all four boys on farm to view so you can see the results for yourselves.

Border Union Show 2011

We have had a very busy two days at the Border Union Show, hence the lack of blog and tweets!  We had more animals this year and nine different breeders which was good.

Friday morning we were up early and headed off to Kelso to build pens and the ring and get the fleece judging done.  Kelso is a Composite show, so the fleeces are judged on the Friday with the animals on the Saturday and the scores combined to obtain the overall placings.

It can all get very complicated but with Rob Bettinson from Toft Alpaca's judging the show we were in safe hands.  Just to prove the fleeces were judged here is Rob with apprentice judge Melanie Douglas hard at work yesterday.

Before I get too excited and tell you more about it, I must say a big thank you to all the stewards who helped out, Judith Millburn, John Waugh, Mike Griffiths, Carol and Dave Pearson and Paul who as always was entertaining the crowd with his commentary.

We had taken along 6 animals, 3 boys and 3 girls.  As it was a colour championship we started with the blacks and worked through to the whites.  Our first alpaca in the ring was Meketaten, we had high hopes for Meketaten as she has a fabulous fleece, thankfully the judges clearly agreed commenting on her fabulous fleece, 1st place - thank you very much. Meketaten who is from Golden Guinea also went on to win Brown Champion.

Next up was Sandstorm, our adult boy.  Another first place in a very close class, so we were very pleased with this one.  Sandstorm is a compact alpaca with excellent conformation, with a very pleasing head type and fabulous fleece; the description the judge gave of him in his summing up.

Then it was the turn of Lady Godiva, another of our Golden Guinea progeny, she came second  in the Intermediate Female class.  She was exceptionally well behaved in the ring.

In the fawn colour championship we were then delighted that Sandstorm was awarded best fawn.

Next was the turn of the whites, we had Niveous and Wynfor in the same class, Intermediate Male.  These two boys are from Legend of Spartacus, the Supreme Champion at the 2009 Scottish National Fleece Show, so we were hoping for good things from them.  After a little deliberation, Niveous was placed  1st and Wynfor 2nd, how impressive was that, Rob said there was only a cigarette paper between them.  I was pleased that I agreed with his placing too!

The final show team member was Barnacre Casiphia, now this girl is something very special.  She is a well grown with an outstanding fleece and great conformation.  She was actually in a class on her own, Intermediate Female. 

In the ring the judge asked a number of times the date she was sheared as the rate of her fleece growth is fantastic, she already has an inch of very impressive fleece.  First place again followed by White champion!  Not bad eh, we take white, Fawn and Brown animals and win all three champions.

Casiphia then went on to win Supreme Champion and Best of British, with Meketaten, yes the brown (!!) being awarded Reserve Champion.  What can I say we are so so pleased, it just goes to show what you can achieve with a lot of hard work and good breeding.

I will tell you more tomorrow, yes there is more.

Hay presto!

With no sign of Geena's baby arriving today I decided to head off up to the hill to see what progress had been made.  Groundwork was delayed because of the torrential rain last week and was scheduled to start on Monday.

Well how disappointing, some machinery had arrived on site but there was no sign of any workmen or anything happening - not impressed it's almost two weeks since the scheduled start date and we have got nowhere.

On a much brighter note Steve had kindly cut our hay, I'm all excited, for the first time ever we will have our own hay - not enough though!

I'm at Kelso tomorrow for he Border Union Show, fleece judging tomorrow then animals on Saturday.  Another busy couple of days, mum will be left animal sitting, hopefully she will get plenty of knitting done on the bench!

Happy birthday Rory

It is Barnacre Rory's first birthday today, Rory is one of the four young boys we currently have for sale.  He is a lovely friendly boy who had his first outing the weekend before last and was a little star.  He happily let people stroke and admire him (despite the horrible weather at Otterburn).

Rory was partly bottle fed as his mum Geena can't produce enough milk, it is an annual job with all Geena's cria.  Thankfully Rory was a good little feeder and was even happy to have my two year old niece help out, aren't they both sweet!

He has turned into a lovely young friendly boy with a very fine fleece full of character, which despite his mum being black is exceptionally bright.  Here he is today celebrating with his friends, Minimus, Niveous and Wynfor.

Big box of fleeces

I received a rather large box full of fleeces this afternoon ready for the Border Union Show at the weekend up at Kelso.  It actually feels real now the  fleeces are arriving; it should be a good show.

Geena is still hanging on to her cria, she's not actually due until next week but she is looking like she wont be too much longer.  Mum is hoping that she will have it whilst she's here over the next few days.

The cria are all continuing to grow up and gain weight nicely, its amazing how quickly they grow.  Emery, Kate's daughter is by far the biggest despite being the fourth one born.  I am slightly concerned about Spadicious though, I think he is a little constipated again.  He was like it a few weeks ago but I managed to sort him out and he was going ok so I am keeping a very close eye on him.

Oh my word it's already 11.30pm and I've not done any spinning yet and I have an order for some grey gloves which mum can't knit until I've spun the yarn.  Carol is also complaining she has almost run out of yarn!  I need more hours in the day.

Lights, camera, action

In comparison to yesterday the temperature has been rather cold today, in fact this evening it is somewhat cold.

In between the jobs today I did manage to take a few snaps of the cria to share with you.  The first one being of Chiquita and Piccolina, she is growing nicely and this evening weighed 7.27kg which is just under 1.5 kg growth in her first week.  We actually met a little Piccolino at the weekend at Wooler, how spooky is that.  He came running over to tell us and see if we had Piccolina with us. 

Next is her playmates, Nadia on the left and Jam-Packed on the right, both of which are gaining weight nicely.  Jam-Packed is now over 8.5kg. 

Finally photo is of double trouble, on the left we have Emery and to her right her half sister Celestial.  These two along with Loki's other cria Seymour are always on the look out for trouble with a capital T!

 

Wooler Festival

We have been out today at Wooler Festival with some of the alpacas and our knitwear.  The weather was much kinder to us this weekend than last!

The sun shone and the crowds gathered, there were a number of people who came to say hello who had seen us in the past elsewhere.  In fact the Pearson family (no relation to Carol and Dave!) came especially to see the alpacas which was very nice of them.

In one of my brief quiet moments I did manage to snap this photo, as you can see the alpacas were proving very popular, as was our knitwear despite the hot temperatures.

Many people were fascinated by the alpacas and commented on how friendly our boys were and we received lots of compliments on our product range which seems to grow every time it goes out. 

I now have a lot of updating to do on the shop; some things won't even make it on-line which is always encouraging.

The great outdoors

There was a big job list to get through today, so it was another early start.

After the morning feeding routine we decided to move a bale of hay and straw that were in one of the rented fields.  It was a good excuse for Paul to have a play with the tractor and forks.  Thankfully all went according to plan and other than a broken pallet.

Next on the job list was the weeds, Paul needed to do some strimming whilst I was doing a bit of poo picking. 

We wanted to let the new rescued hens have a bit more freedom, they seemed to have coped well with their big kennel and yard so we thought it was time to release them into the wild outdoors!  It took them a while but by the end of the day most of them had ventured out.  Hopefully they will remember to go back in to lay their eggs or I will have a daily egg hunt!

On the alpaca front everyone is happy, Geena is our only girl left to birth and she's not actually due until early August.  All the cria have been enjoying playing in the sunshine, followed by a snooze or two.

Gabby had obviously decided to leave her daughter, Lady Godiva (her 2010 cria) to babysit her full sister Nadia.  Gabby is very protective of Nadia who isn't allowed to play with the other babies, she is the same every year.