wow – what happened to the weather?

one minute torrential – the next T shirt basking.

The alpaca have been in and out and up and down the lanes …

more than a lift in the Eiffel Tower (no Joan Collins jokes here please its before the watershed)

sooo – with shearing looming next week, 90% of the Alpaca are now in the barns until THE day.

Few realise how THE day becomes the focus… the shearers are um, shall we say busy to say the least.

Well the ones I have met so far. Everything has to be ready,

Alpacas in, Alpacas dry, shearing pens ready,

holding pens ready, moving pens ready, fleece bags ready, labels ready,

help ready, tea and coffee ready, lunch ready… are you getting the gist?

this year we are doing things very differently and hopefully it will be “alright on the night”

few realise that shearing does not “just happen” but is a military operation!!

as for getting the Alpacas in for keeping them dry – well the haystacks I just monitored on the CCTV at 9pm –

um well least said soonest mended!

at least when the fleece is not wet you can pick out the straw and hay…

so to a Man Thing. do men listen? is it me?

i asked for two hooped hurdles,

he brought one.

I asked for the trogs to go down to the manure heap,

he took one and left the other.

I asked him to pop out for a HAM because i did not have time to defrost a gammon, soak it then cook it this week end.

In the full knowledge I have 5 in the freezer, what did he buy?

you guessed it … a gammon.

Is it me?

with GCSE’s started and the testosterone running riot – i do wonder!!

still, at least he tries and i am always grateful for any help at this time of year!

onwards and upwards…

and no, the Titanic is still lilting folks!!!!!

well it appears I am not the only one who is unhappy with the Herd software! but it also appears that no one has created one that satisfies all – lets get designing please.

All preparations for shearing thwarted due to rain.

Few folk realise that Alpaca cannot be shorn wet.

it is not just the electrical danger, it is the fact that the shears will not go through wet fleece and there is nowhere to dry them.

with the average fleece laid out being 7ft x 4ft approximately, thats ok for a few but not many have the facilitiy to dry more than a few out.

So barning is essential for dry fleeces which means:

Around 40 Alpaca to shear soon with torrential rain forecast. Has to be done inside obviously.

They have to be bone dry or the shearers – who book the date a year in advance per herd – cannot shear them.

So during the course of advance preparations all Alpaca will disappear from the fields into the barns – as I get them in – to be kept dry until shearing– as the weather is going to be dire.

They have to be monitored, fed, hayed, watered and mucked out from now until the weather improves enough for them to return to the fields newly shorn.

High risk of hypothermia if permitted to get cold and wet at anytime but especially when just shorn.

Peru – its hotter of course when they shear and they do not have our weather to contend with!

With one female already 3 weeks and 5 days overdue on giving birth to the first Alpaca to be conceived here – it’s bound to happen on shearing!

She is lilting like the Titanic on a daily basis …

I’ll keep you posted on that one.

meantime before it started raining:

topping

halter training

barn clearing

pen set up

Alpaca herd software.

Extensively used for recording all husbandry with your herd.

From toenail cutting, ear taggin, registry records, mating dates, birthing dates, LMD’s, shearing, innoculations, observations – you name it – there should be one for it!

But which one? What do you use?

There are a number of products out there and I am currently very unsatisfied with the one I use as it does not have the functionality I require.

Please let me know what you are using and what you recommend/do not recommend about it.

This could be very useful for all.

wow – its been a very busy 6 days since I last blogged. We have been busy with preparing for imminent births, imminent shearing and imminent rain!

topping, poovering, spraying all done and ready as we could be for the rain.

Here is a brief reminder of last year…

bring it on!

wow – its May. Where did the first part of 2014 go?

our first female due to give birth on her 11.5 month last mating date is now two weeks overdue already and looks like the Michelin man! Bless!

its full on with spraying inbetween bouts of wet weather at the moment.

Few non farming folk realise that spraying cannot be done in the “too hot or too wet or too windy” phases of life. So trying to keep the nettles/thistles/buttercups to an acceptible or neglible level is even more difficult in the current weather conditions!

Bit like mating really – Alpaca dont when its too hot and slide off when its too wet!

likewise, the warm wet weather is bringing out the critters from midges to bumbles in force.

So IVOMEC jabs for the entire herd are a must – prevention rather than cure is the way forward sometimes when weather conditions are uncertain for a few weeks.

Galloping towards shearing now with the barns all clear for the girls

and hurdle pens ready for the boys!

my highlight this week was catching the cria in colour sequence when eating

with halter training and feet pick up training, spraying and strimming …

Strimming areas which need collecting with the G23 – not to be field tidy but because it will get in the soon to be shorn fleeces otherwise!

The funeral is next week and thank you to those of you writing in with your kind thoughts to the family.

humble apologies for so long since our last blog but sadly there was a very sudden death in the family and life goes on regardless in farming…

more matings

and watching the leaflife whilst mating…

and rummaging through fleeces in preparation for shearing…

and I cannot believe it is nearly May!

sometimes we forget about the beauty all around us

we can never underestimate the power of love of a parent and in the countryside around us …

we can see it in so many ways…

The HOE Show is this week end folks if you want to catch up on Alpaca latest

new website and new show format !!!

well it was also the turn of the wood this week end with a couple of little jobs needing doing to ensure safe Alpaca Events this year!

the Jetty was in a poor state after the floods and needed total refurbishment:

The Before!

the after!

and as he had saw and plane in his hand, hubby finally managed to finish my Alpaca wooden head. Bless.

You may recall when a neighbouring farms tree fell in the winter storms, I spotted that the rot in the neighbours tree looked like an Alpaca… well here it is varnished!

the before…

and the after…

you can sure see it now!

well more skirting fleeces in the rainy weather.

With the farm build and move, I had to store two years fleeces and do them in one lot

– it totalled some 45 fleeces to skirt and pick and numerous to keep and store for show – including the show winning ones and cria fleeces.

I had totally lost the will to live by the end of the week end but finally got the job done between husbandry jobs and paca birth watching!

and more mating – the boys were fab – halter training early really pays off!