I'm still waiting

Ms Humphrey's staring at Cherrybomb trying to ge her to move from prime position.

The girls are now sleeping in the barn every night.  We don't have doors on but it is still warm and cozy inside.  I was speaking to Head Office (Wellground Alpaca Stud) and they may have a dancing alpaca but I am claiming that my girls are housetrained.  They go outside to poo so it saves me having to muck out the barn every morning which is just as well because for the past week it has been a full time job keeping them supplied with hay and water.  We have even been bringing some of the water troughs into the sitting room of an evening so that I have water to give them first thing and then just keep topping them up with warm water during the day.

Rosie is STILL pregnant.  423 days, but whose counting.  We have had the vet out again and everything still seems fine and I am glad that the cria is warm and safe during the dreadful weather we have had.  I have been warned that it could be a difficult birth with being so late but Matty is still reluctant to induce yet.  We may have another scan done later this week if there is still nothing happening.  It has been no fun crawling round on the ice and snow trying to see if there is an udder or looking under her tail.

It has looked magical here with the heavy frost covering the branches on the trees and the but it keeps us too busy to enjoy looking at it.  We only had snow for a couple of days but the frost also stopped the poor animals getting to the grass.

Today has felt tropical in comparison and an even brighter note to my day was a visit from Rosemary, from Westhill Alpacas.  We have been choosing the best fleeces from both of our herds and combining them to have them processed together producing an elite spun product which we are busy knitting.  We are waiting for our next shade to arrive back from the mill to add to the light grey and cream we already have.

I was just about to cast off a scarf the other evening when Rosemary emailed to say that she had an order for an extra long scarf.  Sorted.  I just carried on knitting and thought I was never getting to the end of it.  It was finally finished last night for Rosemary to collect today.  It was only after she had left with a selection of gloves, hats and scarves that I realised that although we had drank a couple of cups of coffee I had forgotten to get the biscuit tin out.  Honestly, call myself an alpaca farmer?  That is lesson number one.  Always get out a tin of biscuits when you have visitors. 

We did manage to get around and have a look at the girls and this years cria.  The problem is that the bio-security we have in operation is difficult at the moment.  The disinfectant foot baths we have at every paddock gate are still frozen and Rosemary could only get her foot in about an inch.  We both managed to have a bit of a moan about how difficult it has been doing the paddock cleaning when the poo is frozen to the ground.

I got a brilliant idea while we had the freezing days and got Si to bag up the poo to put against the water pipes that are above ground to prevent them freezing.  The next day I was expecting running water but he came back from the tap to tell me that they had still frozen and so had the three bags of poo.  Oh well, back to the drawing board.