Thunderstruck

Weather still dry so the land is draining slowly. We have been taking advantage of this drying time by getting out and about trying to move the business on.

The wellington boots were scraped, scrubbed and disinfected last night in preparation for a busy day visiting other alpaca farms. First visit this morning was to Ashton Lane Alpacas to check out their stud boy, Thunder. We have been looking for a really good suri male to put to Ms Humphreys after she gives birth later this month, well, that is if all goes according to plan, otherwise it will be during April. Thunder looks pretty amazing and his colour is wonderful. On some parts of his fleece it is as though somebody has dyed his coat with a bottle of burgundy.

After we had decided that we would definitely want to use him we drove down the road to Head Office. After coffee and a chat about genetics we went out to go through the fleeces of Wellground's stud males. They are still some of the best stud alpacas around and show us all what we are working towards. Rob and Les showed us how to take fleece samples to send to the lab and we then had a walk round the paddocks to see the girls. I did notice that they don't seem to have any weeds amongst their grass, so different from here, so that gives us something else to work towards. We really do have our work cut out here now. While we were walking round, Bullet, their new cria, came bounding over to have a look at us. He is so cute and alert. I really can't wait for our births to start now.

We sat and talked about how we can keep our herds safe from TB and Rob and Les have a contractor there putting up extra strong fencing. That place is going to be like Fort Knox by the time he has finished. Just looking at their barns make me jealous, they are so clean and we are still up to our knees in mud.