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

A new sport?

Bales collected together.

Have you heard of Crown Green Bowling? Perhaps not. It is a genteel game, usually played by older people on a crown shaped, i.e. not flat, lawn in the northern parts of England and Wales. A great deal of skill is involved to ensure that the bowls travel in the right direction over the curved terrain towards a smaller ball, known as a jack. Now as you can imagine, if you follow this blog, the idea that I have taken up a genteel sport usually played by older people is not something I'm likely to do, but I did play something a bit similar today. I shall call it Crown Green Bale Bowling. The idea of the game is to assemble bales of hay into groups. Now our bales are not the huge ones, they weigh about 25kg and not 600kg and upwards like some you see these days.

The view from the oak tree hill of the cut hay

We can now see our alpacas again

Our fields are definitely not flat and so it is possible to launch some of the bales down the hill to gather them together for easier collection later, or at least it is in theory. Usually the bales don't travel very quickly and have to be encouraged along the way or more likely rolled manually depending on the gradient. However, occasionally there is a rogue bale, perhaps where I haven't anticipated the angle and gradient correctly and those are the ones that gather speed as they roll off in the wrong direction. At this point you will see this not so genteel older lady haring down the field in pursuit of a bale of hay before it ends up at the bottom away from the others, or worse in the pond.

It is amazing how much the grass had grown. Such little rain
but it seems like it was just at the right time. We got almost
double the amount of hay from these areas this year.

Ian and his stork pals. They sometimes get rather close and
have to run to get out of the way. It is comical watching them

As you can gather Ian has been cutting and baling hay this week. I help with gathering the bales and  stacking them. We haven't stacked them yet, we will be doing that tomorrow to allow them to lose some field heat overnight. We only bale and stack on the same day if there is rain forecast, it is better to wait otherwise. He was going to start cutting properly earlier but there was a forecast of rain. We did get some much needed rain in the end, but not as much as was forecast (yet again!), but at least it was enough to keep the plants going.

It is still dry and dusty though

This is on the verge of the field.
It has plenty of flowers to get
seeds from later. Interestingly
we found out that the purple and
yellow flowers (well not really
flowers but bracts) are actually
parasitic. Well I didn't know that.

The day before Ian cut the hay we had a phone call to ask if a group could come and survey the field for a biodiversity assessment. We are pleased we didn't get it cut after all. We were a bit skeptical at first as we knew they were meant to be doing an assessment ages ago and thought that had finished and wondered why they were doing an assessment on a major holiday weekend. The problem in Latvia, if you can call it that, is there are too many places with high biodiversity and so I think it might be taking longer than anticipated. Anyway, it was indeed a legitimate group and so we had a fascinating time wandering around our land looking at the various biotopes and discussing how best to manage the land for biodiversity.

Lots of flowers but not special enough! We need to reseed some
of the marsh orchids into this place.

It just so happens I found one, down
by the barn

We were also able to give them valuable details of where we had re-seeded after pig damage and where we knew there were plants they were looking for, for example cowslips, which are starting to spread all over the place. I only said last week that our meadows are flower rich, maybe not as much as they could be, but we still have a lot of the different plants they look for, just maybe not all in one place. I shall certainly be looking for seeds from the various plants on their lists. I downloaded the booklet the lady was using to show us some of the plants they were looking for from the website of the organisation. It is very handy.

We have loads of vetches this year. I need to find out exactly
which sort this one is. I have been photographing them to
compare later with the book I downloaded 

A butterfly orchid

The top of our hill with the old oak tree is apparently a special sandhill biotope and over the hill - which we didn't think was anything special also qualified due to the number of plants per square metre. Apparently the ski hill, where we get most of our hay from, was declared a special area before as the satellite picture picked that up. That has been meadow for many years and never re-seeded and so it is full of flowers and different grasses. On our trip around I also spotted a couple of butterfly orchids. We were quite pleased about that, as we hadn't seen many in the last year or two, probably due to various factors, but mainly because the animals are grazing in those areas. We will make sure we cut later to let them re-seed themselves.

I thought at first this was an orchid.
It is in an area we have found orchids
before but realised it wasn't the
butterfly orchid we had seen before.
Apparently it isn't an orchid. It is a
woodland plant, but that is as much
as I know at the moment

Our potatoes are enjoying the alpaca manure, not bad
considering the lack of rain.

It has been good this weekend to take some time off from computer work. As I mentioned earlier it was a holiday weekend here in Latvia. There are lots of activities and many families gather in the countryside to see the sunrise on St. John's day. There is a rhyme that basically says the person who sleeps through the night and doesn't see the sunrise on St. John's day, will sleep the rest of the year. I'm afraid we went to bed. We have a lot of work to do on the farm and by 11pm we are ready to sleep. We also have a heavily pregnant alpaca that is due any day now and so we want to be up early enough for any possible births. Fortunately alpacas usually give birth in the morning or at least early part of the day, so we don't want to be sleeping late.

A sit down protest. This is to stop them going in and using
their house as a toilet during the day. They do have plenty of
shade, there is a huge oak tree at the bottom of the field.

Apparently daises aren't special, but I think they are. They
also make a great resist dye plant.

I was also up late one night this week, trying to finish off some work for the project. My colleagues were away again and so it was up to me to get it done. I managed with half an hour to spare for the deadline. Happy days! It did cause a bit of a problem though, as it is not easy for Ian if I am working late when we live in a caravan. If I'm up working, he's up too. Heh ho! I had another Skype online meeting this week. Normally I would Skype from in the caravan but that particular day it was far too hot. I also do not normally do video Skype calls because there are too many team members and our signal for the phone is not fantastic, but this was only a meeting with two others. I made them jealous because I was there with a blue sky and a few clouds as a backdrop, whereas they were both in offices. I even got to show our alpacas to one of them after the main meeting was finished and we chatted about some other things that needed sorting.

This is a good indicator plant, or is it a characteristic plant. I
did get a bit confused by the terminology and not sure if it was
a translation problem or not. Anyway it is typical of the type of
biotope it lives in and we have plenty of it.

Not a native biotope, but my herb garden. I don't think I've ever
seen so many flowers on the lavender. Obviously enjoying the
dry conditions.

Awww! Jakobs and Josefs having a hug! Actually not, they
are play fighting and trying to bite each other. 

I finally got our chicks moved into one of the arks and out of the cage they had been in since they were hatched. This now means a nightly ritual of capturing the little darlings to put them away, until they get the hang of putting away time. I usually put feed in the hutch area so they come into feed and then close the door, all operated by a simple pulley system. The problem is that until they get the idea that the food is in the hutch area, they don't go away. I was relieved that on the first night four of them came to investigate. That meant only having to capture four of them. The second night, only two went in. Pah! I left them for a while and when I went back, only two were still out. Phew! Climbing into the chicken ark to capture them is not so easy, but at least it is easier than the ark that the older chickens went into. There would be no way to capture them in that one. It was never meant for long term use, but ended up being used for that.

Group hug! Or an alpaca game of twister

Jakobs looking very cute.

We have four different arks. Most of them are totally enclosed, but the other one is under netting to stop them getting out and stop the hawks from getting to them. The cockerel in that one, will not go away with the girls, but each night he almost seems to check that I have put them all away before he hops off to sit on a bale of hay. It is funny the way he cocks his head to one side and fixes me with a look as if to say, "Okay! All present and correct! You can shut the door now!" He then sleeps on top of the box where his girls are after I leave the enclosure.

Herk still looks kind of tired these days, but it is only on the
hot days when the flies have been bothering him

Chanel is also looking tired, but she is due to give birth any
day now

Inside this amazing nest are five baby swallows. It's just they
wouldn't cooperate for Ian to get a photo of them.

One of the parents having a rest from darting this way and
that. We got to watch some amazing arial acrobatics this
week as they had a territorial dispute with some others and were
backwards and forwards getting insects for their little ones

Still hanging on

Looking enormous

We have had so many moments this week when we thought the alpacas were going to deliver that we are getting to the point where it is only their bulging bellies that keeps us believing they are pregnant. So still no news! There are signs, definite signs like Snowdrop sitting with her feet to one side and grinding her teeth; we got so excited about these signs that we were convinced she would give birth in the morning, but when Ian went to let her out the following day, she went outside and started feeding and didn't look uncomfortable at all. The weather has still been cool most of the time, with only the occasional very warm day which at least means they are not suffering too much from not being shorn, but I think Ian's nerves are wearing.

Trying to get comfy

Trouble ahead! The chickens have discovered the currant
bushes again

We did have another group of visitors, but these were folks we know well and they were returning a trailer to us. They spent a little bit of time coming to see the alpacas though and we made sure that our cockerel who has gone for our friend before was aware that I had a stick with me and he usually scuttles away when that is waved about. Unfortunately our usually placid cockerel disgraced himself and went for their little girl. I don't think it was a pre-planned thing, I think he went up close and then she ran and he ran after her, but not too sure about that. I tried to catch him, but he managed to keep out of arm's distance and so he made a retreat. Obviously it is something we will have to watch when people visit. Especially when they have little ones.

The dark round spot on Tellus' back is the offending lump
before it started disintegrating

We had a kind of medical emergency yesterday and if you are of a nervous disposition or trying to read this while eating, I would suggest you skip the next two paragraphs. Tellus our stud male had a lump on his back that the vet looked at on Saturday. With a bit of internet searching and the opinion of our vet, we think they are fat lumps from clogged sebaceous glands. We are wondering whether the extra weight he is carrying this year has anything to do with the sudden explosion of fat lumps over his body. It is not uncommon to get them, so we are not too worried, but this lump was rather large in size, so the vet suggested a biopsy, which was scheduled for this coming week so we could take it to the labs for analysis. Ian though noticed that flies seemed to be particularly drawn to it and so he wondered if we had anything that we could put on it that would keep the flies at bay. I don't use insect repellents as I hate DEET products, they make me feel ill. I use a spray with lemon grass and vanilla oil in, which is fine if I keep spraying it, but not so great for an alpaca as they don't want spraying on a regular basis. The only other solution was a soap we had with tea tree oil in it which insects do not like, so I started washing the affected area down, only to realise to our horror that the lump was starting to disintegrate. It was gross. For the next few minutes we were removing hard crystalline lumps and revealing a gaping hole. Unbelievably, Tellus, stood still for most of the time of fiddling and poking around with this lump.

The blue-bodied chasers are back again

Sundays of course are not good days to try getting hold of vets and so Ian nipped up to our neighbour who used to be a vet to see what she suggested. She suggested Brilliant Green, but all she had was iodine solution and that was out of date. Brilliant Green was used a lot in the Soviet era, especially for insect bites. Even post-Soviet era it was still used regularly and we remember lots of children during camp weeks in our early days of visiting Latvia with what looked like alarming green spots all over them. Now we know what it was. A little later on, our vet rang back and she agreed it might be a good idea. Neither our neighbour nor our vet suggested stitching it as it might just harbour infections. It was better to let it dry out naturally and heal by itself. We managed to get hold of some Brilliant Green and so Ian will try to put it on tomorrow morning. That will look weird. I have to confess we also have some of the stuff we got out of the wound in a jar in the fridge for analysis. Gross!

Mating damselflies

We had rain this week. I know it might not seem so long ago since I was complaining that we have had too much rain, but the last lot of rain was on June 1st, when we had a thunderstorm and then nothing until yesterday 14th. The ground was beginning to crack and the upper pond level was starting to fall, so Ian connected up the pump to pump water from the bottom pond to the top pond. We reckon we moved about 3000 litres of water and means we can carry on watering the greenhouse without worrying about the level of water in the top pond. The cool temperatures, lack of rain and wind has meant that germination has been rather slow for many seedlings. They are just starting to get going with the few days of sun to warm the soil followed by the good shower we had, but the temperatures have dropped back down again - good for alpacas but not for plants. It is a good job that although we have a short season, we do have long days that can bring plants on. It might just mean we have more cabbages and peas this year, which do well in cooler temperatures and less of the hot weather plants. We'll see, it could all change.

Ian spent quite a while trying to capture the swallows in
flight, a difficult thing to do, but I like this one

Since last week's blog was such a long one, I didn't mention that we gave away our third lot of chicks from incubating our own eggs. We are beginning to wonder if this is a one off venture or the start of something profitable. Hmmm! Mind you, to be profitable we would then need a larger incubator - so maybe just another of those little supplementary things that can add up over time. We still seem to be getting black and white or grey chicks and no brown ones, despite having several brown laying birds, which seems odd, but the black ones are rather pretty. Hope they are good layers too and not all male ones. We are a bit worried though about foxes as we have had more visits. Ian even found one eyeing up the chickens in the arks. When we went to the dentists today, we took the precaution of fastening up our free range ones to keep them safe. It is a good job they are so easy to entice back to their secure homes with a little food.

The pied wagtails are easier to capture though

Another thing I didn't mention was I left my phone behind when I went away for the few days to the conference last week- it was such a palaver. It wouldn't have been too bad, but I had been trying to organise a meet up with someone to discuss a development project and he had my phone number to make it easier to find each other amongst the conference delegates, since we hadn't met before. Once I realised I had left it, I headed out to find a mobile phone shop, as I had about three quarters of an hour between buses. I then bought the cheapest phone they had, which was still €54 but at least the sales assistant got me set up and running with it, complete with a new SIM card and I didn't miss the bus. I did need a new phone as I was using Ian's American phone which was now about 9 years old and buttons weren't working properly. It also didn't hold it's charge very well. Ian tried to get a new battery for it a few years back, but for some reason it didn't work, so it was still on its old battery. Now I have a dual SIM phone, so that should be good on trips to the UK as I should be able to get a new card there and not be chopping and changing SIMs.

A sunbathing Estelle

Ian got a new phone today as well. The battery doesn't last well on his old one and the connector wasn't very good, so it didn't always charge up. In fact he was using an old phone of mine to charge up his battery during the day and then swapping over at nights, but that wasn't always successful. We found a shop with used phones that still seemed in good condition and picked one of those. It was only after a while that we realised it was probably a pawn shop. Still as long as the phone works, we are not too worried.

I'm stopping here near the feeder and the water bucket, in
the shade! 

I see Sir Tim Hunt, a Nobel Laureate in science has resigned over what he now describes as silly comments on the place of women in labs. It is fantastic to see so many women humorously posting pictures of themselves at work in the labs because it shows that women do have a place there and they are not really a problem in mixed labs at all. It is ironic though that there is an element of truth in what he says, after all if you are into science it is more likely that your future spouse will be too and certainly the case for Ian and I. We met at university first day, first term of the first year and and what attracted him to me? Me in my lab coat. Not so sure the lab coat will look so flattering these days, I am of a fuller figure now, but after 33 years of knowing each other and nearly 31 years of marriage, there must be an element of truth, only it didn't apply to every woman Ian met in the lab, which is fortunate as he worked in labs for over 20 years.

Buttercups are lovely to look at, but not what we want
in the grass. Fresh they are not that healthy for animals.
Fortunately they lose their toxicity in hay when dried.

So yes, love in the lab is possible but not to be expected as Sir Tim Hunt seemed to imply. His comments were not fair to men or women, it suggests that men are incapable of thinking about anything else, other than women when they are around and unable to control their urges in order to concentrate on their job. To hear him say that women cry when criticised made me wonder what kind of a lab he was running. Constructive criticism can be delivered in a way that does not reduce people to tears. I am just pleased that now he has had a chance to make a proper apology and some prominent scientists have jumped to his defence as a person, including his wife. They made no apology for his comments but at least vouched for his non-sexist character, which is good. It now opens up a whole new can of worms though, of how universities handle their staff and silly comments made by them. It also opens up that trial by social media issues. I wonder if that will have some effect too?

Tellus' brother Turbjørn. That mark on his back is coloured
fleece and helps us to tell the two brothers apart. It is not
like the lump on Tellus' back

Talking of saying stupid things I have come out with a classic this week, that perhaps beats one of my family's all time favourite, which was to switch around the "C" and the "T" in an order for Lemon Curd Tart. The waitress in that particular instance was a saint and never even twitched when I said it. This morning's offering was to manage to combine two words in an inappropriate way, so cornflakes was mixed with porridge. I am not going to tell you exactly what was said, as it could incur hits from unsavoury websites that I would like to avoid, but if you switch the "P" from porridge with the "C" in cornflakes, I think you will get the idea. Try not to snigger too much in the morning as you eat your breakfast, it makes a mess of the table.

I nearly forgot to add that I had an interesting meeting this week about the wild boar issue in the area. The government changed the law last year and I was interested to know if it had made any difference, I suspected it wouldn't and so far my hunch was correct. It was amusing to be asked if I was the lady in an article in a hunting magazine and it was also amusing that it had been noticed that we don't always do things the same way that others around us do. I explained that we are scientists by training and so we like to experiment. My interviewee even suggested that maybe I could be on a committee to do with the issue, but we both agreed that would be unlikely to happen, but you never know. At least I hopefully will be able to keep up-to-date on the issue with some insider information and maybe I can pass on information back to the committee.