MORE WEANLINGS

When it eventually got light this morning my first sight was of our garden bench up-side-down in the fish pond - still very windy then - thankfully it hadn't killed any of our fish in the process or the little fountain thingy.

I had a second year Vet student with me today and after the morning feed round and a cup of coffee we spent quite a while handling the weanlings, getting them used to having their legs touched and picked up which was really useful.  Then we got all chubbies from the weight watchers field in to the yard for condition scoring and weighing. The two real porkers Orchid and Medina are still scoring 11/10, I think I'll have to send them to Zumba or invent a treadmill for fat alpacas getting them to produce electricity or something - no wonder I can never get them pregnant.  Cassandra is pretty fat too at 9/10 at least she's pregnant though.  None of them needed to change groups and will stay on their diet of Camelibra and very little hay and their eaten down field.

New group of weanlings

Midlington - had a fringe trim so he can see out now

All very calm and quiet - no crying for mums in this group

Then we brought in the rest of the females and cria. Most of the cria are now huge and 5 or 6 months, the mums were mostly fine, but a couple of them had lost a bit of condition which settled my decision to wean the rest of our cria right there and then.

We hatched a plan to move the first weanling group down to the yard, mix them up with the new group and put them all back out again, but with the high winds under their tails the first group just wouldn't co-operate so we changed to Plan B which was to leave the new weanlings in the yard with a couple of stables to go in until we have more helpers.

Meanwhile Peter has been working away on our trees, getting rid of the Ivy, all a bit dodgy in the wind - we heard a tremendous crack, like gunfire, as a tree up on the hill behind us came down. I do think we've had enough of this rough stuff now - can we have some calm, frosty, sunny days please?

THE FIRST BIG STORM OF 2012

The skies are blue now and the wind has died right down but at lunchtime today I thought the world may indeed come to an end in 2012... torrential horizontal rain and very strong winds bashed us about for hours. And then suddenly it was all over and the sun came out.  Watching the radar on www.raintoday.co.uk was quite exciting, heavy rain, usually dark read, on this occasion was a line of almost black crossing over us.

We had an arborculturalist (can't spell that) (tree man) come and inspect our trees, I was actually amazed we had any left standing, but they were, even the dodgy looking ones. Thankfully he was delayed and 2 hours late, so we walked the boundary in the dry.  He's going to do a survey, expensive, and then recommend we get some taken down, very expensive, and then thin some out, expensive and then lay a hedge ...  I don't think so!

HAPPY NEW YEAR

Well here we are in 2012 ... got a good sound to it I think, I prefer years with even numbers - I wish us all a very happy, healthy, lucky, wise and prosperous year.

Not been much going on here over the last couple of weeks, well not unless you count Christmas of course....    Rebecca and I had our usual holiday walk challenge - to take the dogs somewhere different every day, I think we managed it and we even discovered a few new walks, all within 2/3 miles of our village. We're very lucky that we live in such beautiful countryside with lots of footpaths and bridle paths to follow. Not so good is that the inside of my car is now covered in mud and Jazz's slobber - yuck.

One of our Xmas walks - looking out over the Meon Valley from Old Winchester Hill

We've done a bit of halter training on the weanlings, when they've been dry, they're coming along nicely now and beginning to walk after just a few 5 minute sessions. Keen to get the first batch going before we wean the next lot, which may be this week, depending on the weather,  as I have to find something to do with a Vet student whose spending the day with us - can't make the poor girl pick up poo the whole day!

First both alpaca (Treasure) and handler (Rebecca) have to be relaxed!

I spent ages yesterday updating our website, always tricky, as I usually get something technical wrong - this time I couldn't understand why some of the links didn't work - only to learn that I had to refresh it's pages on my computer to get rid of the old cache - whatever that means! Anyway, our course dates are up on it - all very exciting - with 3 visiting Judges, Liz Barlow, Nick Harrington-Smith and Jay Holland all giving fantastic training days with us, lots of opportunity to learn masses about alpacas -  plus our own Beginners Course - don't forget to refresh the page if you can't see them!  www.mvalpacas.co.uk

Bobby Dazzler getting used to his head collar 

Yasmina looking relaxed on her head collar 

Yasmina learning to walk

Just 5 mins once a day for a week

The Sorcerer waiting for his turn

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!!

Merry Christmas to you all from all of us!

ANOTHER DATE FOR YOUR DIARY

Whilst you're all adding those course dates to your 2012 diaries - here is another one not to be missed for alpaca breeders before the breeding season gets under way.  By International Judge Nick Harrington Smith here at Meon Valley Alpacas, being central to the BAS Southern Alpaca Group, and is open to everyone.   contact me for details and to reserve your place soon 01489 878663 info@mvalpacas.co.uk

Wednesday 28 March 2012 One day Seminar designed to help better understand how to select and breed successfully for the bloodstock market and the fibre industry. Gain an insight into the importance and relationship of those traits most important to all markets.

DATES FOR NEXT YEAR

A couple of dates for your diaries -

We have the wonderful Liz Barlow coming here to give a BAS Alpaca Evaluation for Breeders Course on Saturday 4th February - limited to just 12 places, this is a fabulous days education, not to be missed, all classroom based, so we will be cosy in the training room whatever the weather's doing outside - lunch and refreshments included. Please get in touch to find out more and book your place soon.

Our own very popular Alpacas for Beginners day course on Saturday 3rd March - ideal for anyone thinking of keeping alpacas or newbies... again contact for details.

As soon as I have dates fixed for further courses I'll post them...  some very interesting ones I promise!

Been cold today but everybody was dry first thing, so Peter and I set about microchipping the cria - would have got it all done very quickly if the battery hadn't died in the chip reader - took longer to get the battery out and replace it than it did to chip them all. Anyway Job Done and now I must get on and register them.

WINTER

The trees are mostly bare and so it all looks a bit wintery out there - not as bad as last year when we'd already had a foot of snow by now - but we have had slightly more seasonal weather this week. I hope we get some snow for Christmas - but not too much!

The pacas managed to dry out today and are looking reasonably clean but a bit dishevelled - not surprising given the amount of rain we've had. Yesterday morning they were almost crispy, they'd had a soaking the night before and then the temperature must have plummeted overnight - the gates were frozen shut in the morning and all the raindrops everywhere were solid, as were the outside of the pacas fleeces - shows how well insulated they are.

We had a very large group of students from South Downs college come to learn about alpacas as part of their animal care course - thankfully we were all in our heated lecture room for most of their visit, and then  a shivery 10 minutes meeting the alpacas in the field before going back in their mini-buses.

Tomorrow we give the second dose of the season of AD&E and will handle the weanlings a bit, they've settled really well and are enjoying the hard feed with extra goodies - carrots and micronised peas with Readigrass - yum.