It has been a very busy few days. The Australian scientist Jim Watts of the SRS breeding system came by to look at our herd and give us some help in selecting our embryo transfer females and to look at the stud males. It was very hard work, we felt exhausted at the end of the session, but it was helpful and very interesting, so worthwhile. Luckily there was some leftover stew and an apple and redcurrant crumble so we ate that and fell into bed.
Today a very nice Dutch family came to visit who already have some alpacas. We talked and looked at animals for five hours so feel similarly wiped out. However no leftovers in the house…! Oh dear starvation beckons.
Tom, Alex and Matt arrive for a long weekend tomorrow evening. I think we shall make beech leaf gin. This is made like sloe gin with very new beech leaves and apparently turns the gin bright green. A must for cocktails I suspect and I think the boys would be very thrilled to offer it up at their London dinner parties!
Unfortunately we discovered one of our older female alpacas dead in the field this morning. She had a month old female cria at foot so we are now trying to persuade it to take a bottle. So far only managed to get 250mls down but it has started to suck a bit and will no doubt get the hang of it eventually. I think I am going to bring it into the house tonight to have an intensive ‘you will live and drink out of this bottle’ session. It’s a good size cria at 15 kilos so there is no reason why it shouldn’t do well. We need to get to the stage when it will rush up to you in the field, drink the bottle, and then rejoin the herd. Wish me luck.