Astonishment all round – the sun shone on Day 1 of shearing. The shearer Mike Banks, his two helpers, Lynnette and Andrew with Chas and me as fetchers of the alpacas, managed to shear 104 animals on Wednesday, pretty good going. Lynnette was amazing, very efficient and quick. We only had 45 left to do today, as Chas had sheared 25 or so a couple of weeks ago, so the shearers were on their way by lunchtime. They stayed Tuesday and Wednesday night and we all went up to the pub last night where they regaled us with stories of nasty Antipodean snakes and spiders that kill you given half a chance. All we’ve got is the humble adder.
One of the black stud males Patrick has gone bananas and keeps trying to bonk everything in sight including this new black stud that has just arrived on farm. We had to remove Patrick and put him in another field with Toffee Crunch who stands no nonsense. TC obviously was missing the rest of the studs and escaped. The builder from our development down the road came hurtling up to tell us but TC was easy to catch as he was standing forlornly on the wrong side of the gate to the studs field. We tried another tack and put Patrick in with the old geldings but he just decided to rape them instead. Chas went down to catch him and got hold of him and promptly disappeared from view as he fell into the ditch with Patrick. It was very hard not to cry with laughter. Anyway Chas hung on to his ear, managed to get a halter on him and then the two of them emerged from the ditch. So Patrick is in purdah in a field of his own with the studs on one side of the fence and the geldings on the other until he calms down.