It was a thrilling moment yesterday morning when I peered out of the bathroom window at some ungodly hour and saw our first Centurion cria sat up by its mother. Shot out and sprayed its navel and put a coat on it just in case it got chilled. Our last two births have both been first time mothers who popped their crias first thing without any trouble.
Tulaco Centurion is our fawn male, our bright fawn hope, having done a lot of winning in the show ring over the last two years. This little one is a female, terrific,, straight legged and strong, medium fawn with loads of fleece in big curls, so looking good. Two more of his are due shortly so we hope all three will thrive and be little crackers when we hit show time next year. Who knows, might as well be optimistic. Centurion didn’t start working until late last year but this year his hit rate has been excellent so we will have loads of his cria next year. It will enable us to see what he does over the good, the ordinary and the downright ugly.
Last night we had torrential rain, it actually woke me up which is akin to waking the dead. The yard is positively sparkling and hopefully the mushrooms will arrive with this rain as the trigger. We kept the newborn in overnight so she and her mother were the only dry alpacas on the farm. The others have big hedges to get under and all seem happy this morning. No doubt it will make my corgettes turn into marrows even faster.
My brother William, sister in law Liz and their daughter Katy turned up yesterday afternoon after being to a show of rocks, gemstones etc nearby. It was great to see them and we showed them the new house down the lane that is for sale. They made some helpful suggestions that we are pondering. At about the same time a Swedish lady and her husband arrived who had been delivering their daughter to Exeter University and were interested in alpacas so the afternoon vanished. We had spent the whole of Saturday and much of yesterday catching up with all the breedings – the stud males were working hard – and we did loads of scanning. That wasn’t easy as we are both tottering around like old crocks with bad backs sustained by large quantities of ibuprofen.