A sad time

RIP Herkules. You have a lovely sunny spot to
rest now.

I think I spoke to soon when I wrote my last blog. "No catastrophes". The week was ticking along nicely until the Friday. I was talking in an online staff meeting and Ian burst in through the door, grabbed the box of injections we have for the animals and said, "Herk's down". I apologised to my colleagues and hastily joined him. Poor Herkules was on his side and unable to get up. We weren't sure what had happened. From then on, it was a roller coaster of a weekend. We said goodbye to him several times until we finally decided that enough was enough and he wasn't improving, so we called in the vet to put him to sleep on Tuesday morning. He went very peacefully.

We supported Herkules between two hay bales
to stop him from falling over on his side, as this
seemed to make him worse. We don't know how 
long he'd been on his side when Ian found him.

One less tray of food at night for putting away time.

Within a few hours of putting Herkules to sleep,
this lot decided to escape. Someone and we 
suspect George must have lent on the gate and it
swung open. 

We had spent most of the weekend trying to work out what was wrong with him. We first came to the conclusion that he may have been suffering from a sub-acute thiamine deficiency that goes into an acute phase from time to time. It is a common problem with alpacas as they are sensitive to thiamine and it can be related to many causes such as bad teeth, or guts not working properly.  Earlier on in the year he made a rapid recovery after a high dose of thiamine, so it made sense.

A bit of bribery didn't go amiss. The only problem
is that they get through the grass so fast at this time
of the year. They have plenty of hay to eat, but still
prefer the grass.

The morning milk run

The vet came to do an autopsy that evening and we then changed our minds and thought that maybe he had cancer as he had lots of little granular lumps in his liver and lungs, but after doing some reading it appears that might have been from a parasite infection. His heart didn't look very healthy either as our vet said the walls of the heart were very thin. Another aspect was the mushy spleen and maybe this explained why he was susceptible to infections. Some of the things we had queries about we were able to resolve later through reading, such as alpacas do not have gallbladders so that explained why that was missing. They also have smooth stomachs, unlike goats, sheep and cows that have lots of papillae in them, so that looked fine.

Spot the swans heading south.
Hint: Just above the treeline in the
centre

Lots of mushrooms, just not all 
edible. There are some edible
ones still growing in our greenhouse,
so one night we had baked parsnip, 
mushroom, lentils and walnuts
in a sour cream sauce with tomato
and cucamelon salad.

All in all, we are still not entirely clear as to what caused his illness or whether it was just a combination of factors. If it had been spring, then we may have fought a little longer but we knew that even if he recovered, it would be a very tough winter for him. He was already underweight and hadn't put much weight on over the summer like he did the year before. In the event we spent the nights sleeping in our clothes so that we could get up through the night to move him and massage his legs. Ian had also got up very early on Tuesday morning and just sat with Herk, except when I did so he could see to the other animals. I had to insist that Ian at least eat a cheese sandwich, which is not like Ian at all (definitely a breakfast first kind of guy) and I kept him going with hot drinks until the vet arrived. We were both exhausted and Ian especially so. He even got up once and I managed to sleep through. Sometimes it is just wiser to know when to call it a day.

More non-edible mushrooms

I'm so proud of my cauliflower this
year. Normally they don't do so well.
The hot summers are not good for
this slow growing veg.

Of course that is not all we did all weekend. On one of Herk's good days we managed to sort out the chicks. They needed cleaning out and were just about ready for moving on to bigger quarters - only the kittens were being shut away in the ark overnight that we intended on putting the chicks in, so that meant big changes all round. Normally the chicks go into an ark once they have all their feathers and can cope with the cool nights. These are late in the year and so more tricky. We decided to keep them in big greenhouse for the time being so we can run a cable to the heater we use for chicks. Not sure if they actually used it overnight as they seemed to be huddled into the egg box section of the ark, but at least the heater was providing warmth in the box. 

Hmmm! Hello!

The kittens have been very interested in the chicks but fortunately that seems to be the extent of it. The older cats ignore them - they've seen it all before and know to leave well alone. Now the kittens are out and about in the night too. So whenever we went up to the alpaca house in the night to see to Herk, there was often some little followers. Okay if they stay outside but not when they climb in through the roof openings as it freaked out the other alpacas. The number of times I've taken one or both back to the greenhouse. Of course they can get out but they don't do that immediately. Fortunately Herkules was not so freaked out by Rocket Ron, as he was too sick to bother. In fact at one point Rocket Ron was sat on his back. Pity we didn't get a photo of it, he climbed off before we could. 

How about a game of ball?

This section of road collapsed into
the river a few years back. They
have finally repaired it and even
put barriers in. The road is now set
further away from the river.

Life without Herkules carried on much as before. The worries we had before he got sick are no longer a problem. He was being challenged from time to time by the younger ones and sometimes they rear ended him - as alpacas do - and that would cause him to stumble. We had thought about separating him off at night, along with Turbjørn with his bad neck and possibly meek and mild Freddie. In the end we didn't need to. Turbjørn still has a bad neck but now he won't stand still for Ian and he's started resisting going in at night - not a good idea when some neighbours have experienced a dog attack on a ewe recently. Separating him off at night would only make him even more wary. Sigh! As another of our neighbours said, "No animals, no problems!"

Friends now?

Well maybe. This is still a rare 
occurrence. Our two naughty little
kittens now have to be locked away
while they eat, because they gobble
down their food and then go and 
muscle in on Eyre's. Not sure if
Sofie would be so submissive, but
she isn't around as often at feed time.
Eyre boxes their ears on a frequent
basis, but they don't seem to take
much notice. 

The nights are closing in so much faster these days and is making life more difficult for caravan living. Temperatures are not too bad and our heaters keep us warm enough, but it is the cooking in the greenhouse that is getting more of a problem. We have lights in the greenhouse but it is cold and peeling potatoes in the cold is never much fun. It is these kinds of challenges that send us back to the apartment eventually. One of the things that holds me back from suggesting is that we are still getting fresh food from the garden. The mild autumn means that I am never short of veg. Much to Ian's dismay the Brussel sprouts... errr! I mean little cabbages, are doing immensely well, as are the parsnips, beetroot  and cabbages. Even the late planted turnips and celeriac are doing well - although I haven't harvested any of those. It is so easy to just go out in the garden and pick them or dig them up, rather than have to plan what to get at the weekend or get Ian to get them.

No caption needed really

Such a sweet looking little chap!

Over the weekend I had to do some thinking. Travel across the borders to Estonia became difficult once the Baltic Bubble was punctured. This coming Friday is my graduation day when I formally receive my doctorate, a culmination of a 12 year journey. Could I make it or not to my university? Someone travelling from Latvia to Estonia should take a Covid19 test, as now Estonia has a lower rate than Latvia. Easier said than done when living out in the sticks, especially when the government changed the rules and there is now a charge for tests after the service was inundated. Anyway it transpires that I don't need the test because the journey is for my studies and that's okay from Latvia. Another aspect was that I didn't want to travel such a long distance by public transport, there have been a few incidences of infections from doing just that. Another issue is that it means a whole day of travel each way so I would need somewhere to stay - harder now with the virus threat. Anyway that has been solves as a friend of mine is lending me a car - ours sounds rather creaky at the moment. I just have to pray they don't change the rules on Friday.

He's starting to earn his keep now though