New student

Warning alert! Staged photo. This isn't how I 
normally feed Lolly but I needed a photo in 
nature for the expert working group. So this is
me with our biotope as a background which
we manage using the alpacas of course.

It was Ian's turn to be a student, but he's now graduated with a certificate. Our land was designated a moist meadow biotope and it meant he had to attend a mandatory course four day course to get the special subsidies for this piece of land. He had forgotten about it in the busyness of this time of year. He suddenly remembered and checked it out to see when it was. It turned out the course started the very next day. Fortunately the lady at the bureau suggested her son as a translator for the zoom videos. It was a bit frustrating as Ian didn't understand a lot of it, but he's got a very nice book that has lots of details and will help us plan the management of the land better. We will also see about a consultation to draw up plans. 

The girls proving that alpacas don't mind long
grass sometimes. They weren't eating the long
grass mind - it's not the sort they like, they were 
eating all the vetch and clover that they really 
do like.

They also appreciate the tasty, short green grass
too.

Another frustration has been the weather. We still seem to be missing some torrential downpours but we haven't escaped entirely unlike the period of drought a short while ago. The drought has definitely ended and we are well into the showery season. It doesn't help for cutting the remaining hay fields. Some hay was cut and has been left in windrows for the last week. It won't be good for anything except mulching somewhere, even then some of it is too weedy and just wants composting in a hot composter - rather a lot of compost though. I do need some, but perhaps not that much. 

Having a nosy in the greenhouse. There is a
fence between the alpacas and our greenhouse.
Not sure they would go in anyway, unless they
spied our grapes perhaps.

This looks like the two young ones with their
Mums but it's not. It shows the young ones
are well integrated into the herd, which is good.
Especially relieved to see that Lolly is 
accepted and her and Karla are often together.

The weather has meant a change in flies. We no longer have the giant horseflies. Hurray! We now have the irritating ordinary flies. Booo! Can't win it seems. The flies themselves are generally not too bad, but if they find a weak spot they are in and feasting on sores. Horrible things. We are having to put daily fly repellent on the alpacas, creams, barrier sprays - you name it, we've tried it. It's okay in the morning to put the creams/barrier sprays and fly repellent on the animals for most of them and that seems to be keeping the issues at bay to some extent, although top ups for Tellus is sometimes needed during the day, but Chanel!!!!! Oh my! Her skin is the worst, she attracts the flies due to being so dark and sweaty and...... she's our most awkward animal to deal with. 

Silla enjoying the sunshine. Good job as there has
been precious little of it just lately.

Still inseperable

All the other animals we can generally treat by Ian holding onto them and I applying whatever is needed. Except Chanel, oh and Brencis but that's another story. We have to time the encounter. The strategy is that I get my spray in hand and as Ian takes hold of her head, I move in swiftly to start spraying before she sits down. The good thing is that she isn't spitting quite so much when this is done, she just moans pitifully all the way through the procedure. She has also developed an annoying habit of bracing herself so that it makes it doubly difficult to get hold of her legs to put anything on. Whatever goes on has to be sprayed to stand a chance of putting it on. Any creams that would heal her skin are too difficult to apply. Maybe we should get a non-electric plaster sprayer and see what that does. I have a feeling that might not end well though. 

Karla is turning out to be a very laid back little
lady and the spitting image of her father. She
can be a bit stubborn though, also just like her
father, Brencis in the picture below.

This is the look I get when I call her name for
feeding!

Since Lolly our youngest cria (baby alpaca) has arrived, all I seemed to do is prepare food, eat, feed the baby, wash bottles, on repeat until it is time to sleep.  I'm grateful we've managed to drop the middle of the night feed, although the early mornings are proving more of a killer. I've added 5 minutes a day onto the length of time when we feed her in the morning until it is a more reasonable time i.e. 6:15. Up until the last few days I've been traipsing up the field every two hours to wherever the alpacas are loitering. Fortunately when I shout for Lolly she generally comes running. Sometimes she's even prowling waiting for me, but not too often. Now the feeding has extended to more or less every 2 3/4 hours, which at least means I can get some work done in between.

Not sure if they are just having a chat or a 
disagreement. Still a nice day!

New fashion, obviously!

So yes! I've also started back at work. It's a bit hard going. One of my current projects is screening articles, so reading over a 100 titles and abstracts in a day to decide if we include them in in a study or not. Normally I can read them faster, but for now that is a start. The other job this week was to finally, finally finish off a paper. I had to learn how to create an interactive table matrix from data in a programme we use. It was easy once I got the hang of it, but it took some working out how to ensure I got the right data in the right place to be able to create the file I wanted. I had to listen to a video and I'm not really a fan of videos and could have quite happily fallen asleep trying to watch it. Still! I got there in the end!

Hello!

Potatoes all wrapped up under a mulch of hay
and my squashes that are doing well.

Last week was my final week of holiday and I did get some gardening done at least. I managed to cut all the potato tops off and mulched them up to mature. If I leave the tops on they could spread blight to the potatoes tubers and I also found last year that the potatoes swelled up so much they ended up poking through the soil and turning green, so a thick layer of mulch should help stop that. They'll be dug up in September. My garden is a mess as usual at this time of the year but at least we still find enough to eat in abundance. 

We were a little worried about Turbjørn recently.
The youngsters had been fighting and we wonder
if Turbjørn had been caught up in one of their 
arguments as he seemed to be in quite a bit of pain.
Fortunately he settled down and seems much better
 now. He's also put weight on over the summer, so
that's an improvement.

On the lookout!

My main task is just trying to keep my brassicas going, to get them through this season as the onslaught of bugs continues. The cabbage bugs have been a pain all year and the caterpillars have been joining in the feast, the snails and slugs will be next I'm sure. One night of not checking - usually due to a torrential downpour - and the little teeny-tiny caterpillars turn into monsters. At least the rain means the plants are looking better than they were. I also managed to get some more seeds in and they have now being watered in, or perhaps washed out. I must go and check to see if anything has germinated beyond the radishes I spotted today.

Oh! So that's who they've spotted. Rocket Ron!

Our land looks so nice on a lovely day. Currently
it's looked rather more moody.

We had a worrying few days when Ginger Tom went missing. I messaged a neighbour to see if they had seen him or heard anything but they hadn't. We know the risks with foxes around here and concerned that one of those may have taken him. The weather was awful over those few days too. After 5 days he turned up looking fit, healthy and dry. Hmmm! Did he stray a bit too far and found a cozy barn? Who knows! Anyway, he's back and not wandered off again since. 

Mother checking on her little one. She's only
sunbathing.

A popular preoccupation for alpacas, designed
to worry their owners.

Ian has been giving advice to some other alpaca owners recently. They had some sick alpacas and some had already died. They weren't able to get the right kind of information, so Ian passed on the contact information for the veterinary school and shared what he knew from the very technical books we have on the subject. A bit later he was going to the big town and so decided to call in and see them, as they are kind of close to the town. He spent a long time just chatting about alpaca things of course. A little while later the alpaca owners contacted him again and said a little one was ill. They had told Ian previously that he hadn't been thriving as his mother had died and the other alpacas ignored him, so not surprising. The poor little mite. They were struggling because he needed quite a bit of care and they had a lot of work to do with other animals. Ian went back out and took what medication we had, mainly vitamins, particularly B1 which can be critically low in a sick alpaca and doesn't harm if not needed and just hoped that something might have worked. We chatted about it and he decided to offer to bring it to our place so we could nurse him, but unfortunately he died that night.

Vanessa does look like her Mum.

The grapes are delicious.

I've been in Tartu this last week, just for a few days though. It now seems like a major expedition rather than just popping up the road (long day of travel though that is). A work colleague has a summer home in Latvia and he was visiting his place before travelling up to Tartu for a few days. The summer house is only about 3/4 hour away from us and so I took the opportunity to cadge a lift as we say. It saves a full day of travel and means I could finally get my health check for work done. I could also say hi to my work colleagues. One of them pointed out that we had never met in the flesh before, which kind of surprised me as I had got to know her in the online meetings and forgot she had only really started post-Covid. I had also only seen another work colleague last year when his family visited after my graduation. Such a long time has passed by when we see each other regularly via the computer but not actually in person. So much has changed.

The chicks are growing fast. They'll have to be
moved outside soon

Part 2: The ups and the downs of farm life.

Karla is growing up fast. She started losing fleece on her
face due to the flies but now it's growing back well

When I said I would write part 2 later, I wasn't intending to take so long. A couple of rainy afternoons though has given me a bit of time to catch up, as do the earlier nights. So these are the highlights in brief or lowlights as the case maybe, but still probably long enough to grab a cup of coffee and put your feet up, or just look at the pictures. 

Karla feeding

You can see a faint blue tinge on her fleece from antiseptic
spray we had to put on after op.

I was applying insect repellent to Karla's head one day to keep the flies away from her nose and eyes with Ian holding her when he realised that she had a rather large lump under her belly. After a closer inspection he realised it was an umbilical hernia. Maybe if it had been caught earlier it could have been strapped up but this looked large. It doesn't help that Karla's fleece is growing remarkably quickly and hid the bump rather well. In the end it meant a trip to the vets for an operation. She was heavily sedated but not put under a general as alpacas do not do well with general anaesthesia. With the help of vet, two trainee vets and Ian, her hernia was repaired. Ian was holding Karla and also trying to find a vein for a drip. I even helped at one point in holding the fluid bottle. It got a bit crowded around the table. The good news is that she seems to have recovered well and is bounding around the fields now and even getting a bit bossy.

Chanel and Ilvija are rarely apart. A misty day after the heat
was a welcome change for the alpacas.

Cloudy sky

Unfortunately the next incident did not have such a happy ending. Silla finally went into labour but her baby was stillborn. It was almost as if she was waiting for some respite in the weather to give birth, as she delivered one evening in a the alpaca house with a thunderstorm rolling in overhead. Ian assisted as the baby seemed to be a bit stuck, an unhappy task indeed as it was already dead. Silla then seemed to be in shock and so I went to get our neighbour to check her over. The rain was pouring down and there were flashes of lightening as I drove onto our land. I drove as close as I could get but I nearly forgot about the electric fence being in the way, fortunately I spotted it in good time. It just meant that we had a bit longer to walk in the pouring rain than I had hoped. By the time I got back to the alpaca house with our neighbour, Silla seemed to have recovered a bit and was up and about. 

Spot the swallow on the door. They are raising
their second brood of the year

Military planes have been making regular flights over us. 
Can't be too secret as they are trackable on FlightRadar24

Silla didn't seem unduly concerned about the baby and we are not sure if that was because she knew it was dead or a trait in her family (more of that later). Hopefully we will find out next year as she has been mated to George. Yes! George! He finally realised what he was supposed to do. We put Tellus his dad on one side to mate with Valeria and George on the other side with Silla. Something clicked. We suspected that Silla might be helpful as she is extremely compliant and just sits down when male alpacas come in - that's also how we knew she was ready to be mated. Female alpacas can be mated two weeks after giving birth. We also tried George with Ilvija again and this time he knew what to do. Phew!

My waterlily is really growing. It's a pity it's in the pond
furtherest away from where we spend most of our hours

According to a scan in November, Mari was pregnant, but
she hasn't given birth and certainly does not look pregnant.
She also seems pretty grumpy these days, so Ian would like
another scan to see what is going on. We decided to try
mating her in April next year, along with any others that are
not pregnant and not retired.

So far we think that Silla might be pregnant now, she certainly seems far more resistant to George, Valeria may be pregnant to Tellus and we are almost certain that Amanda is pregnant as she is normally very compliant but turned on Brencis and spat in his face, despite their difference in size. Ilvija we don't think is pregnant yet. 

We've had a mixed year with the trees on
our land this year. Some have rocketed
away, like this Gingko that has been in 
years and grown little by little, but this year
has taken off. Some trees have died though,
like one of our cherry trees.

I'm pleased with my dahlias that were grown from seed

Aggie was also late and struggling with the heat. Ian was of course really concerned and our vet gave him some medication to induce her. Ian was in a real dilemma. He couldn't find much on alpaca induction and so was concerned that this wasn't regular practice. There are plenty of accounts of alpacas going way overdue but of course after Silla's stillborn he was very anxious. We did find out later that older alpacas with first time pregnancies do run an higher risk of stillborns. Hopefully that will not be the case with the second. Anyway, back to Aggie. Ian went back to his charts and it dawned on him that he'd got the dates wrong, she wasn't as far on as he thought she was. He decided not to induce her. 

These are quite dramatic Safflower. I have grown it
to make a dye. Not tried it yet though.

Aggie and Lolly

Aggie finally gave birth a week later. You can imagine how Ian was feeling, his favourite kept him waiting and waiting. The day of her giving birth did not go particularly smoothly though. She seemed to get so far but didn't seem to be pushing. I went to get our neighbour again and she helped deliver the baby. Her and her son hung around to watch the little one get on her feet. It was funny. We named her Lolly after Ian's mum. Our daughter pointed out that she was also born on what would have been Ian's Mum's birthday. I'd completely lost track of the dates just lately.

These two are always first in to see what's going on when it
comes to new births

Aggie interacting with Lolly, talking to her and nuzzling her

At first Aggie was attentive, just like she was with Josefs, but she didn't seem to encourage Lolly to feed. We waited until we couldn't wait any longer and instead milked Aggie and gave the little one a bottle of her Mum's colostrum. A little later we tried to get Lolly to latch on. Aggie meanwhile got more and more agitated. We remembered how aggressive she got with Josefs and so didn't persist with it. We thought that maybe like with Josefs she would get over it and bond. No! Despite several attempts to get the baby to suckle she wouldn't. She had got used to the bottle and Aggie was getting more and more difficult to milk. We tried to milk Aggie as often as we could and then topped up with cow's milk but after a week we stopped, as Aggie was drying up. Lessons learnt! Lesson one Aggie will not be having any more babies, although she delivers cute babies she is not a good Mum. Lesson two, really persist in getting the baby to latch on in the first 24 hours, even if the mother is aggressive. At least when hornmones calm down she may bond later and baby will know what to do.

Aggie would stand still but not long enough for Lolly to work
out what to do.

The rest of the herd coming to find out who the new one
is

Sometimes Lolly does sit with Aggie, which is unusual for Aggie as she is not usually very tolerant of little ones. So there is some sort of bond, but not a strong one. Lolly though is just as likely to be sat with one of the other alpacas or just in between them, not with anyone in particular. Her and Karla have formed a bond and we now have Amanda (Karla's Mum) up in the same alpaca house so they can be together. Although Aggie can be a bit of a grump with the other alpacas, especially with other baby alpacas, she is good with the visitors and will tolerate a lot of stroking as long as she gets food. The reason we are worried about Silla though is that Silla's grandmother is Aggie's mother, so we are worried that the lack of motherliness could run in the family. Aggie's mother was attentive enough, just a bit hyper and a bit spitty in her excitement. She wasn't able to feed Aggie very well as she didn't have enough milk and so we had to bottle feed Aggie too when she was younger. That might be part of Aggie's problems as she may have attachment issues. 

Early days

Karla meeting Lolly

The weekend that Lolly was born was also the weekend the chicks hatched. How on earth we still managed to hatch 14 chicks that weekend I will never know. Firstly we forgot to check the dates for the eggs in the incubator and suddenly realised they should be taken off the rocker and the humidity increased. As I said to Ian when I got back from doing that task, the little chick said, "Thanks for checking but could you have done that the day before?" Fortunately it was none the worse for rocking slowly backwards and forwards. Later that morning I went to do some washing and defrost a freezer at our apartment in the village and got a message from the electric company that our electric was off on the land and wouldn't be back on until 2pm. 

The chicks with their "guard". Actually
GT is just taking advantage of the soft
sleeping place with the added advantage
of warmth coming from the chick heater
that makes sure they don't get cold and 
is a stand in for mum. 

2pm came and went and I got back to our land and checked in on the eggs. Yikes it was heading towards 5pm and they were still in the barn and it was rather cool. No other chicks had hatched and that one was looking a bit cold. I took the whole unit up to our caravan that was now in the sun, opened the curtains because we usually keep them closed during the day to shade the interior from the heat. The poor little thing huddled up to the warm side of the incubator. I took it out of the incubator for a bit and warmed it in my hands. After putting it back in the incubator with the eggs, I covered the shaded side with a towel and let the sun do the rest. It was just before 9pm before the electric came back on. Over the next two days the chicks hatched and so far they seem a healthy bunch. Phew!

The weather did finally break and we are not seeing such high temperatures now. It is generally far more pleasant. We are also getting some rain now, although we still seem to be missing the majority of it, so the ground is still bone dry. As I continue to write there is an enormous thunderstorm to the East of us and we've been on the edge of it for well over an hour. The plants are soaking up what little rain we've had and are therefore still green, but it was close to having to either water or let some things die off. 

A bee on beebalm

Aggie and is it Chanel or Ilvija? They are so hard to tell apart

We could still do with a week of dry weather to get the rest of the hay in from an area where we claim subsidies. The date for that is August 15th so rather close. They might extend it, but I'm guessing it might be unlikely as there was plenty of time earlier on. The reason we didn't get the all the hay in was that our tractor was not working so well. The tractor guy finally came to repair the aircon, which was essential in the 30+ degree heat and we had enough time to get the ski hill hay in before the rain - just! There was a brief shower as we were stacking it but it was onto such dry hay we probably got away with it. At least the bales were that dry they were incredibly light and so it didn't feel such hard work as it normally does. Still hard though, all the collecting and stacking of over 250 small round bales around 25kg each.

Normally I don't have to try and catch Lolly to feed her. She 
comes running when I call her. Tonight though, Karla 
came running too. She's become very interested in what
Lolly is doing. In fact I've had to call Ian twice now to help
so that I can feed Lolly without Karla distracting her and
trying to play with her. 

My days now revolve around feeding Lolly. She is fed every two hours more or less during the day and every four hours through the night. Better than every two hours day and night when she was first born anyway. Also I'm feeding her and not Ian because she could become too attached to Ian as the main carer which could present problems later on. Sometimes we wonder if this is part of Aggie's issues after bottle feeding her. Maybe, maybe not! She comes from an odd line of alpacas as I mentioned earlier. I just feed Lolly and then go, which feels a bit heartless at times but it is for the best and she's mixing with the others, so not too bad. All the jobs I have been doing have to fit in around this routine. I never thought I would be so tied to feeding a baby again at my age. Oh well! 

Feeding Lolly like this means she stands still and
I can make sure her head is in the right position to
feed.

Head up and warm milk are essential for making sure the
milk goes into the third stomach

One of the issues this did cause us is that we still had not been able to shear alpacas in Estonia. Fortunately the owner with the most alpacas managed to get a sheep farmer into help. One of the other owners did some investigations but couldn't really find someone and so Ian went up on his own to shear two groups on separate days. They all managed fine, after all he's been shearing for them for a number of years now and so everyone knows the routine. There are still three here in Latvia that need shearing and so hopefully they will done this week.  

I keep trying to feed her with the bottle in front of me, but 
she is such a fidget. I won't want to be feeding her like this
in a few months time.

I think she's full. Look at that hair
though! I was so pleased to get to the
hairdresser today. Milk feed was a bit
late but she was fine. At least she can
eat grass already.

When I've not been busy with Lolly, I've been busy in the garden and greenhouse and still busy with some meetings for an expert group that are only taking a break now. I also had an academic paper that had a submission date of the 6th August. I thought I was going to get a nice long break but that didn't turn out to be the case. I'm having an extra week off though to make up for it. Everyone else seems to be off at the moment anyway.

Very pleased that Lolly still goes and spends her time with 
the other alpacas and seems to be well enough accepted.

Despite the work done on the garden, it is rather
untidy. The wind and rain haven't helped lately.

I finally tied up the tomatoes in the greenhouse and got lots done in the garden. I've pulled up the peas, before the maggots ate the lot, pulled up the chick peas as they had gone over and Ian and I picked blackcurrants and I've bottled them. I've also been replanting the empty beds where I harvested onions or peas earlier with some autumn veg and managed to get some seeds in before the rain. I sowed carrots, peas, broad beans, turnips and beetroot. There was no point in putting seeds in before unless I was committed to watering them since the soil is so dry. The courgettes have been hanging on in there even without the rain, probably the alpaca poo has helped. It holds the moisture well. At least they have started producing more and I'm now getting to the stage where I have to work out what else I can make with them. I will bottle some up for the winter in the same way I usually bottle cucumbers, since I don't have many of those planted up. Hopefully it will work. Otherwise I will have to take the courgettes back to the apartment and freeze them.

Mallow grown from seed. This always reminds me of our
friend in Cyprus as it was there we found out the leaves were
edible.

You're a bit close!!!

Talking of freezers, we had a disaster with our fridge-freezer. I'm not sure what happened exactly but it failed or I failed. I defrosted the freezer section and transferred all the meat into it. Yes! All the meat we had! Those lovely hams and pork joints along with other bits of meat we had in the larger ones in the basement. Away I went and about a week and a half later Ian went back to the apartment and the place reeked. The door wasn't closing properly and all the meat had gone off. It wasn't pleasant. Fortunately as we have a truck, the boot is separate to the main cabin of the car and Ian could bring all the meat out to be disposed of without gagging on the way. We thought the freezer itself might have packed up, but that at least wasn't the case, It still seems to be working - the plug was only half in. Maybe I unplugged it and forgot to plug it in, but that doesn't explain the issue with the door. Sigh! 

Karla now has someone to run around with.

And they sure do like to run

Along with all that, we've also been getting a steady trickle of visitors. Two groups came from a camp catering for those with special needs. The children and carers had a look around and fed the alpacas, then had a picnic on the bank overlooking the boys field. Occasionally the alpacas would come up to see what was happening and ran up when one young boy started to cry loudly, but generally they just ignored everyone and carried on eating grass peacefully. It was very soothing. The group were lucky with the weather too as it was often raining either just before or just after. 

So tiny! She's much bigger now and growing fast. The 
milk from our neighbour's cows is obviously suiting her - 
after I've skimmed the cream off first though. We found she
was starting to refuse it and then I realised the milk had a lot 
of cream in it, so now I take that off first and then give it
to her. There will still be plenty of fat in it as my neighbour's 
cows have very rich milk.

Karla does look like her dad at that age.

Ian did start to build a new haystore but didn't get very far before events or weather overtook that project. We also managed to get Mr. P's teeth cut and Mr.P's and Josefs' toe nails trimmed. Everyone else will also need their toe nails doing soon, so that will be an ongoing project for next week possibly. So as you can see, it's been a rather busy time and not much time to blog. I still keep going with the blog though as it is a good record for us of what we've done and something we can look back on. So I'm not going to promise to blog regularly for the time being, but at least I won't suddenly disappear from the blogosphere, I will be back.