It was supposed to rain all night and we did have a brief shower but not what we had hoped for. Oh dear more watering of the garden and more cracks in the earth. It is a good thing it is so warm as the alpacas just lie around under the hedges most of the time but I’ve put out loads of new hay and left the lids of the hay mangers open so they can get at it more easily. We are also feeding fibregest as well as camelibra to the lactating and heavy pregnant females which we probably wouldn’t be doing in a normal summer. We now have 29 cria on the ground and very pretty they look too. And around the same number still to come. Some of the lactating females are a touch under so we are collecting poo today to send off to check for worms. It will be interesting to see what counts come back as the males we did a few weeks ago had virtually no worms at all.
Centurion has returned from his bonk-fest in Hampshire with his companion gelding who unfortunately missed shearing. The gelding looks bizarre alongside all our shorn animals, so much fleece, such long nails, disgraceful really, but Chas and Kyle are about to shear him today. I have managed to avoid this due to the imminent collapse of elderly back.
I am still struggling to finish my breeding plan. The trouble is that we can see over three years what Centurion and Jaquinto are doing with particular females but have no idea what the result will be with the new white males Dynamics and Talon and we want to give Paris a reasonable number too. To complicate things further one of the young males from the USA, an absolute stonker, Ntherough turns out to be working at under two years of age so he’s got to have some too. My brow is seriously furrowed making a facelift even more urgent.