Slowly Roasting

Never, not for even a moment, do I regret moving to South Australia. But, just around this time of the year I do start to pine a bit for Northern Hemisphere weather.

Sure, the sun is great and sitting by the pool sipping frozen daiquiris or taking the dog down to the beach sounds idyllic. And it would be if it was a holiday. But it’s not, there’s work to be done, animals to look after and it’s  %&**$# hot!

Take this morning, another cria born – one of James’s, a brown boy and his 7th so far (identity number ends 007 so, at the moment, he’s provisionally called ‘Bond’). Not a straightforward birth so I had to stay with them for about an hour and a half and I’ve found that Alpacas don’t seem to understand ‘Hang on a moment while I go and get some sun-screen’.

“They call me Bond, James’s Bond”

It’s just tipped over 40 degrees and I now have what feels like the mother of all hangovers.

I know this blog gets quite a few readers in the UK and Scandinavia and I know you’re having it tough over there with the snow – but I am enjoying the photo’s of frozen farms – I’d just like a little bit of it please to stick my head into…

Babies, babies everywhere…

It’s cria season here at the farm and they’re hitting the ground every day at the moment (which means a serious marketing effort later in the year, otherwise we won’t be able to feed them all!). It’s a daft time of the year really, it doesn’t really tie in with the Australian show season – Any that are worth showing only get a couple of shows at the end of the season and are too old for the 6-12 month classes next year.

So far, the results are good, mostly females and only one lighter than medium fawn.

Our little Suri sideline project is looking promising as well with both of Colin’s to drop so far being beautiful solid browns.

One more and we’ll be able to enter a progeny team at the end of the year. We’ll keep you posted on how things go.

So far this year, no serious problems (keeping everything that’s crossable well and truly crossed…), we had one mum that was a bit fragile, but after a couple of false starts, she gave us another brown girl.

Even Juno, our only fancy has managed to ‘go solid’ this year.

As you can see from the pictures though, it will be nice when we get some grass back…

The joy of unemployment

The Joy of Unemployment

Well, not real unemployment of course, but I’m currently taking a few weeks off for study, farm work and R&R between jobs having called it a day (it was time for a change) at the University a couple of weeks ago.

So I’m currently living the life of the gentleman farmer and loving every moment of it.

It is, of course, monstrously difficult, getting up in the morning to say goodbye to Sarah and James as they go off to work...

So what’s the day like for an unemployed IT manager on an Alpaca farm in South Australia in January?

First comes the first check of the day of the maternity paddock, there are nine animals in there at the moment, three new cria with their mums and three expecting very shortly. Hmmm, Mali is looking a bit ‘bulgy’ but I doubt that it will be today.

Then, feed time for Rudolf, he’s the oldest of the babies in the maternity group, but was a ‘failing to thrive’ cria and has been getting two supplementary feeds each day. He’s doing well now but still needs topping up.

Feed the chickens and collect the eggs then a bit of quality time with the boys over a mug of tea and some lucerne (I had the tea).

Five minutes of Frisbee playing with Ghandi the lab, then get the head down for a couple of hours serious study and a job application.

After another maternity paddock check (all OK), a quick few lengths in the pool, get dinner planned for the workers when they get home later and then the difficult decision... There are some jobs to be done – fleeces to box, shelves to go up in the new office, I really should look at adding some more channels to the CCTV system, there’s some wiring to be done and there’s always fencing and irrigation to work on.

Alternatively, I could take Ghandi down to the beach for a run in the surf...

Dressing an eye injury

I just thought I’d put together a quick post about a problem we had today, it may help other breeders with the same issue.

When we first checked the maternity paddock this morning we noticed that one of our new babies had a problem with one of her eyes, it was weeping a lot and attracting the flies. We seem to have a lot of problems with eyes and grass seeds and always keep a tube of antiseptic eye cream on hand for problems like this.

On closer inspection though we found that she had a nasty little nick in her top eyelid.

We treated this with antiseptic, but the problem remained of putting a dressing on it to avoid corneal abrasion during healing and to keep the flies away. Anyone who’s had to put a head dressing on a cria knows how hard it can be to do anything that will stay on.

So we tried a different approach and, so far, it seems to be working.

We used a knee length stocking

Trying it on for size

Ears out and a dressing pad over the eye.
Tape at the muzzle end to stop it slipping up

No awards for best dressed alpaca...

Her mother had no problem accepting her back after a couple of moments hesitation.

I'd love to know what caused the injury though.

Gardening

I know it is not the most interesting of subjects but I thought I would just tell you about my gardening escapades with Ghandi the lab.

Off to the veggie plot yesterday to plant, rather late I might add, the tomatoes (should have been in by mid October), peppers and chilli's. Ghandi came to help. He helped to dig holes and filled some in! Then it was time to plant the plants, well the pepper was planted at least 3 times, every time I put it in he took it out, quite gently I have to say.

I have to confess to a bit of excitement, we can now get Gardener's World (sad, I know) but the gardening programs here are just not the same. Now I have heard that the new format is not going down to well over there but I think it really works.

Sarah

The first arrival...

If there's one thing that it's compulsory to post a blog entry about, it must be the first arrival of the season:


Yes, that's right - it's a Suri. We don't really think of ourselves as Suri breeders, it's a bit of a side-line, but we do have a small group and are trying to get a good brown line going.

This one is particularly significant though - it's the first cria to be born here from one of our own certified boys (shameless advertising link to the sire...).
Mum and baby doing well - already trying to pronk (but landing in an undignified tangle of legs on each attempt).

Meet Ghandi

After Kitties yesterday - a puppy story today.

Meet the latest member of the Prados family.

Not really an alpaca story, but puppy pictures are always worth posting. We’ve called him Ghandi, not just because he was small, brown and wrinkled when we chose him but because he stood out from the rest of the litter by having a quiet dignity about him. While all the others were racing around like mad things, He was just sitting there, taking it all in and clearly top-dog.

There’s been a big, dog-shaped hole in our lives since arriving in Australia in 2004, but we didn’t want to get one until we were sure that we could offer a home where someone was around most of the time and we were properly settled.

I’d forgotten just how much work a puppy could be…