Shearing starts – then stops

Well, the show season has come to an end, that means one thing – it’s time to shear. Or at least it should be.

We started this year’s shearing with two of the weanlings, a couple of boys destined for wetherhood. You know, sometimes wethering some of these boys seems almost criminal, look at this one:

This is from Rudolph, one of this year’s drop, a Jolimont Warrior boy who, just a few years ago, would have been destined for a stud career. Today though, he just doesn’t cut it and will probably become a pet for someone early next year.

Doing all of our own shearing is a great advantage – it means that, instead of a mad couple of days, we can spread things out over a month.

Anyway… Rudolph and Bond are both overheating and so go to the front of the queue. Off with their fleeces and, like magic, there’s a sudden change in the weather. Rain, near freezing wind and two very cold boys.

“Can we have our fleece back please”

So we now have two boys in coats living in the very sheltered hospital paddock and shearing is on-hold until things dry out.

National Show Diary

Wednesday 13th October

3am… There shouldn’t be a 3 am – it’s an offence against nature itself. But here we are – time to get up and start loading the animals. Four of our own to go to the show and three overspills for Ambersun.

A brief word about distance here, I know that many of the readers of this occasional blog are in Europe and the ‘old country’. To think, that when I used to live in Dover in South East England, I used to whinge about having to drive to Birmingham. Tamworth, where the National is held this year is about 1600km away (994 miles). That’s about the same as the driving distance between London and Gibraltar! Here, that’s considered to be a reasonable day’s drive.

That’s it really it for Wednesday – driving. 18 hrs solid driving, in convoy. Part of the South Australian Contingent along with Ambersun, Classic and Yaringa. We arrived in Tamworth at just after 11pm, got the ‘pacas into their stable and us into our tents.

Thursday 14th October

Hmm.. Camping seemed such a good idea at the time…

This year, the National Show is being held at the National Equestrian Centre at Tamworth. Here’s a tip for any horsey person who’s found this blog via google and is thinking of camping there – There are some really good motels in town!

Camping plots are well equipped but are situated on ground that is either hard as concrete or soft as mud and is right on the edge of the New England Highway on the approach to a roundabout. Truck drivers are friendly characters – they like you to know that they are amongst the safest of road users by demonstrating their exhaust brakes throughout the night – some of the really friendly ones will even toot their air horns in a cheerful way to to say hello to the sleeping camper.

Most of the day spent getting the team back to something like show standard following the long journey.

Friday 15th October

Wet, wet, wet.

When we heard that the show was to be in Tamworth in spring, like most breeders, our concerns were with heat and humidity, not torrential rain and freezing wind. The quality of the animals here is jaw-dropping, even under less than ideal conditions, it’s clear that the standards are still getting better year-on-year.

We had a reasonable show – a second and four thirds out of our four animals and four fleeces, not bad at this level and a fair reflection of what we were showing (a list of excuses and reasons why things were less than ideal can be found on page 94).

Highpoint of the day – the cocktail party in the evening when the arts and crafts competition awards are made. Sarah has a first for a knitted item and I took a smattering of ribbons and the championship for photography with a portrait of Lysander called ‘Bad Hair Day’

Saturday 15th October

OK, I admit it – I’m a wimp. But I never want to go through a night like that again. Sarah went and slept in the car at 1:30. By 2:30 I was laying on the floor of the tent to stop it blowing away – there’s a river running under the groundsheet and a carbon fibre reinforced pole breaks under the strain. Tonight we find a motel.

Today is the last day of showing and again, the standard of the animals is breathtaking. Ambersun are the stars of the show, taking out most of the major championships. It’s encouraging though to see the increasing profile of coloured animals – Milduck in particular have a really great show with their browns.

Sunday 16th October

Ah… A real roof, a decent bed and a good night’s sleep. A return to the land of the living.

Last day. Association AGM, Sale and Junior judging championship.

I have to give a talk at the AGM about IT at very short notice – hopefully it didn’t go off too badly.

The sale goes reasonably well given the current economic situation with nearly all of the animals offered selling.

Monday 17th October

3am again. Time to hit the road again for the long drive home. We decide to come back a different way – using the Barrier highway via Broken Hill. A classic Australian driving moment at one point when the GPS in the ute shows the next junction as ‘turn right in 585km’. This really is a big country.

Great moment at Little Topar roadhouse out in the middle of nowhere – lots of questions about the Alpacas and we end up bringing out Puck and Kobe for photos – needless to say, they both love the attention and ham it up like they they were a couple of b-list celebs, posing for Hello magazine.

It’s gone midnight when we get back.

Next year it’s Sydney, so we’ll do it all again

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

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

National Alpaca week

Our second National Alpaca week has been and gone. It’s fair to say that we learned a lot from the inaugural event last year and this time it was leaner, meaner and far more effective.

The week started with a ‘Meet the Alpacas’ day in the Adelaide Hills. Rather than spending our regional advertising budget on newspaper and magazine adverts, this time we went for large banners on main roads and getting ourselves on the radio and into interviews in the press. It paid off and the day went well, we were never run off our feet but there was constant flow of interested visitors from start to finish. We sold some pets, a small starter herd to a new breeder and some craft work. Most importantly, as a public relations exercise, it was a great success.

It's that time of year again

Saturday saw the start of the show season. As we have 2 girls still to give birth Perry offered to stay home and James and I took off to the Mt Pleasant Show. We had a very enjoyable day. We took a very small show team, 3 animals and had entered 1 fleece. We were pleased to report back that Goldie won Champion Senior Female, Halifax came 3rd in Senior White Male, but
Beatrice let the side down, all I can say is that the standard of animal in the intermediate black class was high as Beatrice has had 2nd place ribbons on outings previously. We had a 4th placing with Goldies fleece it was in a class of 20 and the 3 fleeces placed in front and the 5th placed fleece were all white. Goldie is a Medium Fawn.

So why the small team, well Easter Weekend we are off to the Sydney Royal Show. We have never been there before so it should be interesting. We have been told it is an 18hr drive and due to work commitments Perry is hoping to fly over to join us! He has told us how sorry he is and it wasn't his fault, he wouldn't have set a job completion for the day we start a long drive! But it makes you wonder. So we have split our show team to reduce the number of shows they do. That won't make Puck very happy as he is a bit of a show off and thinks he is the bees knees.

We are taking 4 to the Sydney Show Gypsy, Puck, Beatrice and Helena. Gypsy and Puck are used to long journeys as they have been to Victorian shows several times but this will be the first long trip that Helena and Beatrice will have done.

Sarah

Mine’s a Guinness

Just a very quick post. Life’s a bit on the busy side at moment.

Let’s see, since I last wrote…

I’ve started a new day job this week with ICT Strategy at Premier and Cabinet.

I’ve been appointed to the board as a director of the Australian Alpaca Association.

It’s the first show of the season this weekend (and the Royal Sydney in 2 weeks’ time).

And it’s impossible to take two steps in the paddocks without falling over another baby alpaca.

But, the Irish blood in me (from Co Waterford), couldn’t let the day go past without posting something silly.

Have a good St Paddy’s day!