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

Not a good start to the year

Our magical forest

Winter has hung around this time and the snow has got quite deep, to the stage of making someone like me, with short legs, struggle to walk around in the fresh snow. That isn't too bad and I don't mind. In fact it can be quite fun and we had a lovely walk through a magical forest, which we almost have to pinch ourselves to think we own it. It was better than trying to get an article written for my studies anyway, which is progressing far too slowly.

Me and my short legs 😁

Aggie. Still with the mucky mark from her first course of
cream

Ian finally managed to get hold of some gunpowder in liquid this week, which a vet suggested we get and we started giving it to Aggie. This means I have to travel out with Ian to help him give her the medication. She seemed to calm down and didn't protest as much as she had with the cream. The gunpowder was to deal with any possible infection, but as we found out that doesn't appear to be the problem. On the one hand we are glad we did not go down the antibiotic route, as the problems caused to an animals system through inappropriate antibiotic use can make them worse, rather than better. I know that for myself, I really hate taking antibiotics now and they really do have to be a last resort. We think the gunpowder was actually helping the pain in her jaw though.

Remnants of raspberries

Aggie sitting in the doorway. The girls have stayed in most
of the time

The problem was that we had no idea what the issue was and so we got the vet to come from Jelgava, which is quite a distance and of course it was costly, compared to our normal vet charges. He is the only vet though in the country with a mobile x-ray machine. He is actually a horse vet normally but apparently horse vets quite often get asked to deal with alpacas. I guess it is the difference between treating an agricultural animal and one more used to being treated as a pet. The approach and handling I guess would be different, although I am quite happy for someone to put me right on that. Our vet also came on her day off to take a look at the x-rays and chat with the other vet about his thoughts on the problem.

Mari in contemplative mood

The lower bone has a section missing and the shadow
is a diffuse bone forming

One of the reasons for getting the vet to come is to try and increase our knowledge of issues with alpacas. If it had been a tooth problem we could have seen what the issue was. Also if it had been an infection, that would also have shown up. As we discovered though, it was none of those things. There was actually a gap in the jaw bone, as if she had been shot with a shotgun, was how the vet described it. The thing is though that there has never been an injury even remotely like that and we of course would have noticed something as drastic as that. Somehow the bone disintegrated and we do wonder if that explains a lot of scratching that we put down to a mite problem.

A cheery face with the obligatory straw

More of our magical forest

With the wonders of modern equipment and connectivity, the vet consulted with others and sent them the pictures of the x-rays. Unfortunately the general consensus appears to be osteosarcoma. This destroys bone and hence would explain the gap in the jaw. What is strange though is it also appears that the bone maybe repairing itself.

We stopped using one cream to tackle any possible infection, as it had the potential of irritating the skin and Aggie already has easily irritated skin, and we started using a cream I make up using comfrey and plantain. At least this is usually soothing.

The land takes on a different character in the deep snow, as
the normal vegetation is covered over in a deep soft
blanket

Ian of course has been busy cutting paths with the snow
blower

The thing is that comfrey also is called knitbone and there is a possibility it started the healing, but and it is a very big but, it would not be expected to act that fast, so we are not quite sure what the x-ray was really showing. The vet gave us some more comfrey but in liquid form and another drug, which I am not sure what it is, but is usually given for cancers in homeopathy. These are not low doses though, but all we can do is hope that as the vet put it, it whispers to the body  to start its own healing.

And keeping the area clear around the sides of the greenhouse
to reduce pressure on that increasingly fragile plastic

Our boundary walk

It is not easy for Ian at all, of course. We had already talked about not breeding from Aggie again because we were worried about genetic issues, such as a hyper-reactivity to mites. Her mother had a few issues with that herself and she died last January due to liver cancer. Aggie was also the first baby to be born on the farm. We had to bottle feed her at the beginning because her mother was not producing milk. Not the best start in the world. Whether this has had any affect on her, who knows. Bodies are both resilient and susceptible with a remarkable ability to heal and a remarkable capacity to go wrong too. We are just hoping and praying that the healing is happening already and any secondary problems do not happen.

Two cats taking advantage of the heat from the caravan

Hard to see who we are at the moment, at least in one
direction

Rather than finish on too unhappy a note, at least our car has been running again without any hitches. That could be due to the fact it hasn't been so intensely cold this week. We went to see some friends of ours early on in the week while the car was running and so it was good to be able to spend an evening chatting. The good news is that they got their car up and running too, as they also had issues with the cold affecting their car. Another good piece of news is we had our first visitors of the year, a young couple. The guy had been going past our farm on a regular basis and wondered what we were all about and so they decided to call in and see. It was nice to chat and a good job it was warmer than last week, still chilly but not as bad as it could have been. And finally our first felting course has three of the four places booked, so that is helpful. Still one more place though, so if you are thinking about joining us on this trip then please let us know soon

I love the bark on this tree, such a great texture

I needed some indoor clogs that would stop my feet getting
wet in the caravan. These were a pair of wellies that were
difficult to get on and off but I cut the tops away and they
make a rather snazzy pair of clogs - perfect

No one's visiting the outside loo, can't think why