From a roar to a murmur(ation).

Warning: there are more Starlings in this blog, than alpacas.
Calm settled in today. Two weeks ago, the waters had receded a whole field away, but this week they have risen to be lapping at our boundary again. Friday evening the wind was roaring for four hours, and thankfully all the shelters stayed un-damaged and in place. I had kept enhancing the anchorages, including adding bags of manure to hold them down!

We brought weaning to an end after just over three weeks, when we had to bring the herd together for shelter and a dry bed - after a couple of attempts to suckle, the weanlings were told to forget it by their mums, and we've not seen any attempts since. Halter training has been suspended temporarily for fear of recreating the famous Blue Peter incident with a baby elephant on a lead!

The herd were back over the hill today, and they were joined by a 'murmuration' of starlings - usually these occur on the permanent wetlands about 8 miles away, on a nature reserve called Shapwick Heath, but clearly they recognized  our nearby new wetlands and saturated ground. As they take off, the instantaneous beating of wings makes a loud thud which Scrumpy found quite irritating!

uh oh - look out...

here they come...

"what the?"

Scrumpy is cornered...

...but makes a break for it!

"what's that noise?"

"is it his camera?"

Add caption

that's enough Starlings - here are some Swans.

And hopefully, we'll have clean and more photogenic alpacas soon.

Weaning, cats and blogs.

This week the flooding of The Levels crept closer daily towards our fields, and on thursday reached a peak, just entered the bottom of our hayfield, and since then has slid out slightly. We keep the bottom paddock as a hay field deliberately to give us a margin to reduce the possibility of the snails that host liver fluke.

 Joy acted as Queen Canute each morning:

 
In the brilliant sunshine of saturday we cycled around the flood plain to look back at our herd. A large number of swans are taking advantage of new grazing swims:

and we messed about like big kids - well you wouldn't want to miss an opportunity woould you?

Thats half a mile across to our fields, and it was a 3 mile loop around the water to this point - where there are no hedges or trees, you can't see the line of the road, and so wouldn't dare cycling or driving through it - this was just a little paddle at the end!

 Scrumpy and one of the girls let out an alarm call (screech, yodel?) yesterday - I looked, and it was a ginger cat - looking like a fox?

We held a spit-off session today, and found four-and-a -half spat - well, Scrumpy had realised by the end that he wasn't going to be lucky, and didn't make any effort, and there's always one inconclusive isn't there?

We've also started weaning,  halter training next!

Scrumpy admiring the swans (or his reflection?)

Manure to Manchester

In a period of respite from wind and rain, the herd graze in the crisp sunshine. We've moved them back over the hill as the home paddock is bare and muddy.

I moved the shelters, and had plenty of offers to help fix them:

These breathable shelters have lasted a year now - in contrast, Scrumpys shelter, which had corrugated plastic sheet roof and rear wall was ripped out of the ground and sent into the next field on the monday before Christmas (Scrump was in another more sheltered paddock). Here he is topping-up his tan this morning

:
Our son has just returned to Manchester, taking four bags of alpaca manure for their new garden!
Sorry about photo quality, due to being taken on my 'phone.

Footnote to Andy and Bev of Lane House Alpacas: your latest blog, 'Mud, Mud...' isn't displaying.

More rain, dear?

They said my mum was mated to an exceptional stud male...

Wind battered, mud spattered - the second of two storms today has just passed over - if we'd not had the Eucalyptus tree reduced two weeks ago, it would be lying across the garden by now. The herd had their Christmas treat of vitamins ADE on sunday, and all were well behaved. They are in a filthy state, and will be heading off to a rested paddock to clean up. Joy has had a great run of felting workshops and sales evenings recently, resulting in lots of new ideas for next year.

In the last few weeks, I've taken down the ceiling over the Lounge and created a Gallery, so I've used the Christmas cards to hide the unfinished areas - I thought it was an inspired idea, but Joy has gone to bed in readiness before the big Christmas Eve(ning) gathering for friends, so I'll find out in the morning how inspired she thinks the result is...

Thanks everyone for reading and commenting on the blog, have a great, safe, Christmas with your families, friends and/or alpacas.

Alpaca-lyptus

Apparently winter has arrived - we did have the tale end of the gale here, which finished shedding the leaves off the trees, so we've been lucky.

We had our Eucalyptus tree trimmed last week and have a big pile of branches saved for the herd, as they love the leaves - I've been bundling them up and tying them to fence posts:

Tucking-in to Eucalyptus

Elstar enjoys it too.

Scrumpy (Clumpy) hasn't tried Eucalyptus yet - he's from Wiltshire - they're not sophisticated over there;-)

In 'other news', I've taken out the floor of the bedroom above the Lounge, to form a gallery, which has taken all my 'spare' time lately, today I've been chiselling, planing and rebating an Oak beam to support the remaining gallery floor - it 'only' weighs 106kg now - big heave next weekend - so it was nice to get out with the camera among the herd for a while.

Moira at sunset.

Catwalk cutie.

Some photographs of Joys products, modelled by our granddaughter Pixie, taken by our daughter Kerry, a professional photographer:

Copy and paste the following link:

http://www.kerrybartlett.co.uk/2013/11/a-p-p-l-e-knit-alpaca-products-autumn-shoot/

We went to the SWAG Autumn Show on saturday - a good venue, well organized, and although numbers of local entries may have been a bit low, they were boosted by some outside breeders - one of the drawbacks of shows at this time of year is the lack of Junior entries which usually are the larger classes. It was good to be able to spend a day catching up with fellow breeders and some of their animals. Whether there will be another autumn show remains to be seen, but well done to the organizers for trying it out and exploring the possibilities.

A very good piece on Countryfile last night, featuring Melford Green alpacas, hopefully restoring any damage caused by Kate Humbles comments a few months ago, giving a very food image of the industry - worth a watch on i-Player if you missed it.

I have a walk-along paddock cleaner (PC50 with new hose, bin and exhaust bag) for sale if anyone is interested, having 'upgraded' to a muck truck with 'poover recently.

A brief video.

Here is a little video speeded up which may fill a spare 3 minutes in your day - last weekend my son sat his GoPro camera on a fence post and left it for a while watching the alpacas go about their day - after a while you will see me assemble a catchpen, and then Joy joins me, we round them up and give a few vaccinations and toe-nail trimmings.When let out they have a quick roll in the grass before heading back down to the shelter where the hay bags are hanging. Scrumpy our herdsire, is in the paddock in the background getting on with his day.

Cut and paste into your browser bar:

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyN-k7ukmU8

Set 'quality' to 720p HD for best clarity.