It is that time of year. We have wormed all the animals, given them Fasinex for fluke and have just completed the dreaded drench CCS, copper, cobalt, selenium – ummm delicious. We move seamlessly on to Lambivac for the whole herd except the cria at foot who are at various stages of having the initial jab and the booster. Chas has come up with a reasonably complicated plan for giving all the cria their Bluetongue vaccinations. This has to be given a good two weeks apart from any other vaccine and as there are two jabs and the cria are all different ages, A PLAN is necessary. We are doing them in batches of 20 to fit the bottles of 20 vaccinations until we get to the point where one lot are having the first jab and another lot are having the second when we can use the bottles of 50. Oh dear, I failed O level maths three times. Good thing Chas can add up. I see the British Alpaca Society say one minor side effect of the vaccine was stiffness but we didn’t see that at all earlier in the year when we did our adults and weanlings.
We are lucky here being able to get the vaccine. I hear that in some parts of France the vets will not give alpacas the vaccine and are saying that only one dose is necessary rather than two. It sounds a right mess and the virus is spreading very quickly over there. Perhaps we should be nice about DEFRA for once.
What is happening with the print industry? We have had three companies approach us to quote for printing Alpaca World magazine and we are moving our print to a new company for the next edition as the quote is so much keener. It is wierd, never happened before.
Alex A –
It’s the CREDIT CRUNCH. They’re desperate for business.
Tom A –
Apparently the print industry has higher levels of debt to assets than average and have always found it more difficult to attract loans because banks don’t understand their business models. Now with lenders becoming much more risk averse and companies cutting advertising budgets, they are finding things hard, alas.