A HARROWING TIME

We have been plunged into the gloom of cold November fog and I have had just about enough of the great outdoors for one day and have come in for a cuppa and a bit of a warm up.

Yesterday I handled for the Judge Certification at Bozedown, always interesting to have a peek at other animals and a chance for a bit of a gossip. It was bloomin' cold even with my thermal long johns! So much so that the Judges panel were rescued with a patio heater as they were in danger of fading from hypothermia .... hmm I think they should get a few more of those for next year!  I must applaud the candidates for going for their Judges ticket .. I can only imagine how nervous they must have been throughout the long day, with halter classes, fleece classes and written exam. It is just as well that there are those who have the time and are brave, willing and able to qualify so that we have a supply of good British Judges for the increasing number of shows round the UK and Europe. I also believe strongly that their education should be ongoing to maintain high standards and consistency between judges, and all this should be supported by our  Breed Society.....

Anyway, back today, now because of all the wet weather and our lush grass and other stuff going on, I am hopelessly behind with the poo hoovering and so the only option was to harrow the paddocks the girls have been in last and leave them to rest for as long as I can.  I did try using our paddock sweeper but that just made a horrible mess because it was all too wet and the brushes are a bit knackered.  Now I have harrowed them to within an inch of their lives - they look a bit sad now but they will recover and be the better for it. The forecast is for more rain and the paddock they're in will last them another few days - if I carry on with this system I can rotate them on a 6/7 week cycle, but then I have to find a field for weaning which makes it slightly more complicated .... oh please can we have some hard frosts and dry weather.

This morning I gave the boys a strip of fresh grass in next doors paddock behind electric sheep fence - their first experience with it, and as I watched 3 of them got a zap on the nose investigating the fence! I never recommend electric fencing with alpacas as I know of plenty of people who's animals have been caught up in it with disastrous consequences, but these are just getting a couple of hours a day when I'm around to supervise them - soo much grass I think they thought they were in heaven!

You can just make out the electric fence - the boys having been zapped they now settle down to some serious munching

Action shot from the tractor - quite straight lines though I say so myself!

CATCH UP

Another month and the Hampshire countryside is looking so different - my absolute favourite time of the year and I just want to go on long dog walks and take pictures of leaves and fungi and stuff and then come in for tea and cake and sit in front of the fire watching rubbish on the telly - a simple soul, it doesn't take much to please me. The weather has been a bit wild at times - thunder storms, strong winds  morning mists and even some frost. Half the leaves have fallen in the last week or so, and the colours have been fantastic.

A day of heavy showers - again

Rare sunshine at breakfast time

Autumn mists

Todays walk - there's nothing like kicking through beech leaves!

Beautiful fungi 

The females with crias have munched their way through two paddocks since my last post here and today they have moved on from "Willow" and into "Holly" (field names). The grass is still growing and looks lush and very green, but it's nearly all water and not much goodness so they're getting ad-lib  hay and a delicious breakfast of hard feed to top them up. The field of fatties are still on their maintenance diet of grass, a little hay and camelibra and they're still doing very well thank you, so won't be getting more than that for a while yet, if at all.

Beautiful pacas!

My trusty ride-on mower, which is an ancient hand-me-down, is in the hospital for mowers this week as the drive belt thingy broke.  With nothing to tow the poo-vac or sweeper brush I have had a good excuse not to clean up after the pacas, the only down side to keeping them,  someone needs to develop nappies for pacas? I will have to clean the little paddocks when the mower returns and I just hope that it doesn't rain too much in the meantime so it turns to mush. I had our biggest field harrowed and will leave that to rest now until the Spring if I can, hopefully we'll have a few really hard frosts to kill off the parasite eggs and help break down the moss and dead grass that was dragged up to the surface.

I went to the BVCS conference last weekend which was really excellent. Fantastic speakers - Jane Vaughan was especially inspiring, the venue was good and for me just an hour away,  good food and company though there wasn't much time to chat as the day was so full of lectures. I'm surprised more breeders didn't go - I'm sure they will next year when they realise what they missed.

I've been giving some half day Beginners Courses here in the last few weeks to small groups of newcomers, there's been loads of interest lately and I have sold some females and cria which will be going in the New Year, that's good as it'll help make room for the 2013 crop of cria.

Anyway enough of my ramblings here are some autumnal pictures for you to enjoy...

Pacas in "Willow" they grazed off that paddock in a week!

Moved into "Holly"  

A BEAUTIFUL AUTUMN DAY

Today was our first frosty morning, we had bright blue skies and a beautiful sunrise, the start of a perfect Autumn day. There was no way I was going stay indoors for long, so first a dog walk to enjoy the frost and then the usual feed rounds and check of the pacas. Domestic chores followed and then some visitors and then another lovely dog walk with the girls this afternoon in the Forest of Bere which is just up the road from us. It seemed that everyone from miles around had the same idea, I don't think I've ever seen so many dogs, fortunately the Forest is big enough to find plenty of empty space and it was looking beautiful.

Forest of Bere

It's been fairly quiet on the farm lately, we wormed and AD&E'd everybody a couple of weeks ago - next job toe nails, but not for a couple of weeks.  We've had quite a few enquiries lately and yesterday we had a lovely family come for a Beginners Course.  I need to add a few more animals to our sales list ... I never like parting with them ... but can't keep them all.  It won't be long and we'll have weanling boys on it from this years crop, they'll be ready to go in January and February.

 All our females are in the big fields and so I'm being lazy and not poo hoovering - I just wouldn't know where to start! I'll harrow them when they come out of there in a couple of weeks and then hopefully we'll get a few more frosty days to help clean it all up. Our grass has still been growing a little and the next fields they'll be moving into look lush and still beautifully green. They're eating a bit of hay now and my supplies are pretty low, so I must soon go on the hunt for some good hay, I hope that won't be too difficult this year after our appalling summer.  Anyway here's some pics I took late this afternoon.

Crias keeping their eye on the Marmalade our cat

Macy Grey

Cotton Fields

Topsey Turvey

Cassidy

Some of the girls

Cassidy

The boys

Phew llama breath! 

The boys with their guardian Yerba

Home sweet home

ONE OUT AND ONE IN

A couple of years ago we found a lovely home for two of our retired stud boys, Grayling and Ocho, just up the road in the next village with Liz and Gus.  They are extremely well cared for and loved and so I was really pleased when they decided to take Sir G under their wing as another retiree,  the three amigos seem very well settled and it's rather nice to be able to see them every now and then when I drive past their field. Thank you Liz and Gus!

Ocho, Grayling and Sir G

This summer I decided to retire some of our older females too. I'm quite happy to keep them here but realistically we should move them on as field pets to make room for the next generations, and the occasional auction acquisition..... Yes, we went to the Alpaca Classic last weekend and had a very good day. This event was really well organised, with great speakers and beautiful animals and one of them  - Bozedown Jumper is now in our field. Well you only live once...

New addition Bozedown Jumper 

Today we brought the cria group in for their weekly inspections. Lots of smelly lotions and potions to combat harvest mites and midges. I'm trying out 3 different things and I'm not sure which is working the best but something is as they're definitely better than last week.

One of our older girls Akela is a very spitty madam when pregnant but when she's open,  as she is now she's very cuddly - as you can see in the picture of Rebecca with her and others wanting to join in.

Another job today was to put the boys into a different field. Loads of grass - they are very happy.

ROMSEY SHOW REPORT

I woke early this morning and thought about yesterdays show - all in all it was a very successful day and I really enjoyed it.  It started very early, as it did for a lot of the competitors. It was chilly too at 6.5 degrees at 5am, the sky a clear black with a mass of stars. The journey was easy with hardly any traffic and light when we arrived.

From an organisers point of view the first part of the day was the trickiest.  Our unloading area happened to also be the main thoroughfare for Trade 2 traffic and at one point we had a bit of road rage going on as we had about 6 trailors parked up unloading and queues both sides of very impatient Trade 2 traffic - some actually driving between exhibitors with animals - not ideal and that will be changed next year.  Everyone in and our Judge Liz Barlow arrived, our PA System hadn't. We were due to start in 20 minutes.  More frantic calls and my version of running halfway across the show ground to the main PA Tower where I staggered breathless and begged for our system to be delivered.  

Judging underway and I was first in the ring with The Sorcerer, our grey Intermediate. Crikey it was already quite hot - this day was going to be a scorcher. Somewhere in the background I was aware of someone putting up loud speakers - thank goodness.  Another mental note for next years double-checklist.   We were awarded a second, shame we like the red ones much better!

The sun just got hotter and hotter, and the crowds bigger and bigger - we attracted a constant crowd around our ring, unfortunately there just wasn't time to open up our tent officially to the public as we had the Junior Handler classes going on in our short break for lunch, which incidentally co-incided with a very noisy band of spidermen - the kids did well to hang on to their animals. We had opened the sides up so people could wander round and see all the animals.  Quite a few of the public snuck in though, despite penning them out for their safety - one even ended up wandering into the ring apparently! 

The rest of our show team did well - Eros 3rd and BobbyDazzler 4th in the Intermediate Fawn Male, then Bonami won his Adult fawn male class and then went on to win Champion Fawn Male - his third this year, so I was happy. Our 3 Invincibly Elite xx intermediate white boys came 4th, 5th and 6th.

The Alpaca Stud deservedly won both both Supremes - their amazing grey Nyetimber, who looked just stunning and who our grey Ardingly always came second to when shown,  taking the Huacaya - many congratulations!  

My thanks as joint organiser go firstly to Nikki who did most of the pre show stuff this year and then to our team of volunteers - Cathy and Graham, Lisa and Ray and Keith and Allison and then John on commentary, Jay and Gary and others and, of course our Judge Liz Barlow you made it a great show. Oh and thank you to all those exhibitors who came and supported us and very kindly stacked your penning away for us, it made such a difference.

Not many pics as only had phone camera... and I kept forgetting to take any!

Eros and Bonami being led round by Donna and Rebecca

The very noisy,  quite good band of spidermen - I'm not sure who they were but possibly not the most attractive
shapes in lycra!

Bonami being awarded Champion Fawn Male - handled by Terry

Suri Supreme Line-up - winner 2nd from left

ROMSEY SHOW TOMORROW

A really quick note just to say that I hope to see lots of you tomorrow at Romsey - we're all ready (I think) and team Meon Valley are in the yard handy for a 5.30 am load up ... I probably won't sleep tonight, never do when I know I have to get up early. The forecast is great, warm and sunny - we have a bigger marquis and show ring than last year with more entries, around 130, so our Judge Liz Barlow is going to have a busy day.  The public can wander through the marquis during our lunch break - do come and say hello!

The show team watching me load up the trailer and car

Yerba, our llama being left behind - arrh

Team Meon Valley - ready for the off, I hope they stay dry the dews are pretty heavy.

Being one of the organisers I have had a peek at the schedule - our grey The Sorcerer is first in the ring!  He's looking good - I hope the Judge agrees!

AUTUMN SHOWS

There is a change in the air ... distinctly September, mind you this year it's been hard to know what month we're in for most of the time.  Today is wet and windy, just been out with the dogs up on the hills and the countryside has changed colour, the harvesting mostly finished and the fields are being ploughed up and drilled already. They never seem to leave stubble for long now do they. I used to love galloping about all over stubble fields, the only time when it was unofficially permissible to trespass on horseback. I love Autumn, it's my favourite time of year - misty mornings, warm sunny days (if we're lucky) and chilly nights in front of the log burner with a good drama on telly. Bring on the casseroles!

On the farm I'm still having to top fields, unbelievable amount of grass ...  half of our fields have been completely rested since April and with all the topping (6 or 7 times!) they look fantastic. I've run out of diesel now though and so can't do any more this week, our little red tractor is having a rest. My new ear defenders have been a partial success - the radio part seems to get interference from the engine, particularly the poo hoover - very annoying, I find Radio 1 gets the best reception, or Classic FM - real mood changers! Sometimes I get both at the same time, thats weird!

Melissa or "Middy Lips" because she has the same way of pushing her lips out as her brother Midlington!

And again - rubbish fleece at the moment but this may change!

All the cria are doing well, playing a lot more in the windy weather - I've stopped the breedings a couple of weeks ago, not sure how many we have pregnant yet, I know that one or two have reabsorbed which is annoying, but I'll carry them over til next year now as I really want our birthing to finish by the end of July next year. They're all due their Autumn wormer in September, some have been done already as they were getting itchy, probably from harvest mites, gave them cydectin and been treating a couple with sore noses with various potions with varying degrees of success.

Rebecca and I are off to Alresford Show on Saturday - one of our favourites - they give us a really nice big marquee all to ourselves. It's one of those lovely old fashioned Agricultural Shows with lots of livestock and craft tents and heavy horses, huge tractors for sale and plants. I always see loads of people I know, some that I only ever see at this show and so we have a whole year to catch up on.

I've not made up my mind yet which alpacas I'm going to take, probably the intermediate boys, the exposure to all those people and dogs will be good for them before being shown at the Southern Group Short Fleece Show at Romsey the following week.  Anyway, it's a great day out so come along and pay our marquis a visit we'd love to see you, we're next to the cattle lines.