All things alpaca

Jakobs and Josefs in their new paddock

I mentioned last week that we had just moved Josefs and Jakobs to join the big boys. They have settled in quite nicely and paired up with George and Freddie. Josefs finally stopped moaning around mid-week. Bless him! Aggie wasn't very happy with me either. I had to go and encourage the girls back into their paddock one day before it started to rain and she pounced around the field, tutting away and let me know I was definitely not her favourite person. It was me who led Josefs away and anyway she is much more forgiving of Ian, being her favourite human.

At first they were a little bit separate but eventually they
integrated with the others

As you can see it has been pretty dusty

So yes we did finally got some decent rain this week, of course it arrived just before we planned to shear and so had to keep the alpacas in for a day and a half. It wasn't a deluge, which is probably good but it could have been more and it could have been a tad warmer. In fact at one point it snowed with big fat flakes. This wasn't great as we had a big group of 5 adults and 10 kids to visit the alpacas at the time, but at least the big children had fun trying to catch the flakes in their mouths. Oh the joys of childhood. I also had to lend my rather ancient warm coat to one of the adults as she had lent hers to one of the children. A week ago that wouldn't have been necessary, so I think we are all feeling the cold - I've even reverted to the thermals again.

The number of lorries going past do not help

This is what we expect in the middle of summer, not early
spring

With having to keep the alpacas in to keep them dry they were in a moaning mood for our visitors. At least being alpacas it was more amusing than annoying. We had another group of three after that, so they got to moan to two lots of visitors but were well fed in the process. The last group wanted to take the alpacas for a walk, but despite the rain stopping for them, the grass was wet so we couldn't risk it. We did warn them first and they talked about coming back later on in the year. As it was rather chilly it was perhaps not so bad to have to show them the alpacas inside rather than standing outside getting even colder than we already did.

The boys in a fog of dust

Would there happen to be a wagtail nest in the wood pile
again? By the way, we saw the first swallow of the season
today. Ian tried to direct them to one of the three alpaca
houses but not sure that it listened. We do hope it does as
the flies this afternoon were atrocious. Amazing what a
bit of rain will do

The threat of rain had us running around doing some preparation. Ian sowed some grass seed where the pig damage is and harrowed it in and then we went over to the nearby camp to put mulch on the tilled beds so the soil didn't wash down the hill. Ian has tilled the soil across the contour of the hill to reduce such events but even so, if there is a possibility of a deluge, it would still take the soil with it and so we made sure the mulch was on to slow the effects of the rain and allow it to soak in better.

Yes I should think you are embarrassed for harassing poor
little birds

We were a little worried about Josefs as he did seem rather
agitated and wanted to get back to his mum of course. The
problem is that even fairly young alpacas have been known
to mate and we can't take the risk. He has stopped trying to
escape now anyway thank goodness.

Ian needs to sort out the this year's application for EU subsidies on our land but the times the lady is open in our village are a bit inconvenient this week as we are shearing at a mini Zoo near Riga. We decided to go to a nearby village instead, but when we got there there was quite a queue. The queue also did not move very fast either, this was partly because the lady didn't turn up until after we did and even after she arrived it did not move fast. I had an online Skype meeting that I needed to attend, so we had to give up. Hopefully we'll get it sorted next week. We have until the 22nd.

And now it is spot the difference time. Jakobs and Josefs.
Of course the first thing they usually do is have a roll
after being sheared. Sigh!

A close up of Josefs. We were surprised by how dark he was
underneath

This weekend was the annual Spring market. We've had a few heavy frosts just lately and because we have an unheated greenhouse it took quite a few of our little tomato and pepper plants, even though they were well covered, so I decided to get some from the market. I also got a few plants that were further on than ours such as cabbages to get a good start to the season. I have quite a few planted up, but they have been growing slower than I would like. I may also have spent some more money on plants - well actually a lot of money for me. We got more berry producing bushes that make good hedging plants and a few more herbs to add to my collection. I also got a plant that translated as mushroom grass and yes the leaves do taste of mushrooms. Interesting anyway.

We didn't realise how spotty Josefs was either. He looks even
darker from above. 

As usual Turbjørn was first to be sheared. I'm sure he laughs
at the others

Today was the first day of shearing for us and Ian is not happy. We seem to have caught the Estonian disease of needing lots of combs and cutters because they have been going blunt so quickly. It could be due to the dry weather we had last year and earlier on this year. I'm beginning to wonder if they would have been better outside having a shower, but then they would have been wet for shearing and that wouldn't have been good either. Mr. P was the worst or at least looked the worse, He was also the worst to shear.

A rather dusty Mr. P

Herkules looked rather fed up after his shearing

It was nice that we had help this year. It is a lady and her son who are thinking of buying two of our alpacas and they wanted to see the shearing process. They also had lessons in how to catch alpacas. They weren't meant to be having lessons in catching alpacas, but we had escapees today, not just once but twice. The first escapees were from the training pen where we had put just over half the boys ready for later. There isn't enough room to pen them all up inside now there are so many of them. It is only a training pen and the gate is not the best, well it was even worse than that as it turned out. We let the first sheared alpaca out of the alpaca house - Turbjørn as we always shear him first because he is so nervous - and the next thing we know, Josefs comes running across to see who this new strange alpaca is. Hmmmph! That wasn't meant to happen.

Tellus looks a lot smarter now, well if you don't look too closely
as he has so many fat lumps on him that he always looks a bit
of a mess after shearing. At least he isn't actually as fat as he
has been. That should be good for him.

Freddie and George are still pretty much the same, but you
can see how much darker Josefs is as he is the one with
his head down at the back. Brencis is his usual mucky
colour, having just found somewhere to roll no doubt.

We left the boys out to roam around until after lunch, we then herded all the boys into the training pen usng a rope and then took the unsheared ones across to the alpaca house. Only I managed to let go of Mr. P's lead and he ran off, but I managed to catch him okay. Just as we were finishing off the penultimate alpaca the guy who had come to help us said that there were some alpacas outside the fence. Sure enough, three of Vanessa's crew were stood on the outside of the fence, eyeing up the boys with their new haircuts. Not good news, they are perhaps the most difficult to catch as they are still a bit nervous of us.

So this was the photo from last week's blog of Jakobs

Compared with today's photo. He's still got the little heart
shaped brown lips and big eyes

Freddie close up

Anyway out came the rope again and the four of us panned out holding the rope. The girls headed straight back to where they had escaped from. That at least was encouraging. Ian moved the half demolished electric fence to prevent them going down the bank and we moved in towards the girls with the rope slowly. They decided that it was better to be inside the paddock area and they were then shut in. Phew! Our helpers were quite surprised it was so easy as they have had to recapture their own cows before now and taken a couple of hours to do that. We were just pleased it turned out to be so easy with the girls. The boys were still in the paddock area and unlikely to escape from that, so not too bad. The girls were more free to roam further.