Thomas rang up last night very excited as in the promo blurb for a programme about alpacas our esteemed organ Alpaca World magazine was mentioned. This was in the Saturday Guardian TV guide. The programme is one of the Monty Don countryside numbers on Thursday on Channel 4. We will all be glued, maybe he can tell us how to get rich, preferably quickly.
Meanwhile back on the farm the woodpecker is hammering away again and there are snowdrops and catkins in flower. However the fields look pretty dreadful as it is too wet to clean them and there is mud everywhere
Last Tuesday Alex, Chas and I went to Exeter to buy an air gun. The fact that I have only one hand more or less dictated our choice as there were quite a few that I could not use. This made it rather expensive, how unusual. On Tuesday night I bagged my first rabbit and Alex got his on Wednesday evening. We made an enormous rabbit stew and Alex took loads of photographs and posted them on Facebook. He now knows how to gut and skin a rabbit. Not that useful when you live in London but you never know.
We had a couple of worrying days with a female alpaca who was lying on her side twitching a back leg and obviously in pain. When you see that you instantly think colic or much worse a twisted gut. There was no poo in the barn for two days but she was getting big syringes of liquid parafin and metacam for the pain and inflammation. On the third day there was an enormous lump of shimmering sludge on the floor – bingo. A few days later her poo is completely normal and she looks very happy.