Winter Births

My view on winter births, following Rolf’s comment, is that if you are at home, the heavy pregnant alpacas stay out but if you go out and there is no one around, the alpacas come into the barn. That way any births happen indoors and the cria will not get hypothermia or get attacked by crows or any other horrors. I have four heavy pregnants in the birth field at the moment. Two of them were 11 months yesterday and the other two are later in the month. Normally at this time of year we would expect them to go longer, possibly 12 months. We are away in London for two days next week and Andrew will be here during the day but not in the evening so they will spend the night in the barn. It will make me feel better even though the alpacas would probably much prefer to be outside.

This year we will not start mating until April so that our earliest births will be late March. This group were held over into last year as they had their cria in late autumn. In the past we were into maximum yield so we kept going with the matings. Nowadays we are changing tack and trying to keep the births to the summer months which may mean some of the girls are less productive and perhaps have 18 month gaps between crias. The marvellous Mika, now 17 and 18 this year, always has an 18 month gap as she never gets pregnant until the last cria has been weaned. She may not be the best looking alpaca in the field but she is very healthy, actually built like the back of a bus, and is due shortly.

It is minus three in the barn so I have been pouring boiling water over the outside tap as it is the easiest to de-ice. Andrew just bounced in requesting help, he drove into a large pool of water, now ice, and his car is refusing to budge. Chas has taken the mule up with its super duper tyres to extract him. They may be some time…