Today we do our breedings which means that all the fields have to come up to the yard. It is a good opportunity to look out for sloppy poo (lovely) and anything else that might be troubling any of the alpacas. There are hardly any breedings, just a few of the older girls who didn’t take late last autumn and the ones who have birthed this spring. None of our weanling girls will be ready to breed until June but things will certainly hot up then as we have 10 youngsters ready then and over forty cria due this year.
The new cria is a bit small, only 6.8 kilos but she seems pretty lively. Her mother, a first timer, hasn’t got an enormous amount of milk but we are going to watch and wait and weigh her again in a couple of days to make sure the cria is putting on weight.
The fox appeared again yesterday afternoon and took another chicken. I have only four hens and a cock bird left now. It is very irritating as the chicken flock has been roaming around the farm all year without any problems and now they will have to be shut in until the vixen’s cubs have left home. I don’t want to shut them in and we both enjoy seeing them in the fields, particularly the cock bird as he is very handsome.