It is spring, heavy pregnant alpacas refuse to birth, so life as usual. My Rhea is now just under 12 months and I really want to see this cria as she is a dark fawn Jaquinto daughter with Highlander on her dam side pregant to CME Tulaco Centurion. I am praying she will pop before the SWAG Show at the weekend as we will be there rather than here. If anything goes wrong I shall be mortified.
The five cria that are already here are doing fine, as they are all different colours, black, brown, fawn, beige and white, they look very sweet sat in a group in the field with the old girl Mika. She seems to have taken on the Aunty role as at 19 she likes to sit by the hay manger a lot getting even bigger – 100 kilos at the last weigh in. Mike has a big black female cria at foot but that never seems to affect her waistline, she always looks pregnant even when a 12 kilo cria has just shot out.
We’ve scanned nearly all the girls now and we seem to have lost about five or so pregnancies from 86 females. We are not sure with some of them as scanning can be tricky when they are further on. As we are not starting to breed yet we’ll wait until May to scan again or put them to the male. The grass is beginning to grow quite well now, it is slow here as we are high up, so breeding will start again in May not earlier like last year.
The little cavapoo Alice has improved no end, she looks less like a very small football and more like a dog with an absurd high pitched bark. I spend hours outside pleading with her to poo and on the whole she is quite good. She has settled in and now rushes around wanting to play with her tail wagging furiously. The old mother cat gave her a good wallop yesterday when she got too familiar!