Thursday, July 8, 2010

Nothing to do with alpacas

As regular readers may remember a back in October we had a doggy addition to the Prados family, young Gandhi a brown labrador pup. As Gandhi and I were walking yesterday in our favorite woods I couldn't help but think of the difference here to the UK. Here, we are in mid winter and the woods have lots of campers. This does spoil our walk but that was not the reason. I don't remember winter camping in the UK. I know what you are going to say "it's warmer in Australia" but that really is not the case at the moment. The day time temperature is between 10-12 degrees C and the night time temperature has been sitting around the zero mark maybe 3 degrees on a warm night. We have had rain so the ground is wet but this doesn't stop our tent campers some of them we have seen for the last 3 days.

Last night we had a well deserved night out, we went to see Bill Bailey what a good show it was. The theatre was packed (seats sold out very quickly) and it was interesting to hear just how many English accents there were at the theatre. He managed 5 encores and came back again as we were all trying to leave the theatre. So everybody just stood where they were and watched, sang and clapped.

Sarah

Friday, July 2, 2010

Why we have been so quiet

I thought I would just bring you up to speed on the lack of postings from Prados.

We have had a busy time since late March.

Just prior to us leaving for the Royal Sydney Show we had a cria born, he was a poorly chap to start off with and in the end Perry didn't go to Sydney he stayed home to look after him. Easter Sunday saw the arrival of our last cria (at that time) until November. This little girl was extremely poorly and took a great deal of our time, in fact she still does but she is such a sweetie. She had hydrocephalus, some rather distorted limbs and ulcerated eyes. Needless to say she had no suck either. She has improved a lot her eyes are better, her hydrocephalus has sorted itself out, and with the help of some Vitamin D3 her legs are starting to straighten. She now feeds from her mum but is rather small for her size. Tiggy Winkle as we named her or Tiggy for short now is able to out run us in the paddock. We still keep her well wrapped up in cria coats as it is rather cold here now.

Perry and I have also attended alpaca meetings in Melbourne, helped with alpaca week and just recently an alpaca health day. So along with the monthly alpaca meetings we haven't had much time.

I mentioned about Tiggy being the last cria until November. Our son James changed that with a recent purchase of a pregnant female she is due on the 26th July. Last year you may remember we had a surprise delivery in July in a hail storm, the due date for that young man was November but something went wrong there! I have my fingers crossed that the weather is better for this crias arrival. I really don't like having winter cria we don't have the appropriate shedding for dealing with them.

James and I have also taken a show team to Alpaca Fest in Werribee Victoria. We enjoyed our weekend and came back with 4, 1st ribbons, 2, 2nd ribbons, a Best Brown Huacaya female and a Best Brown Suri Female. Not bad for a team of 7 animals. Needless to say Puck and Gypsy behaved beautifully.

July should see us with a quieter time, so maybe we can get back to posting!

Sarah