More Ramblings from Dartmoor

Following another busy week I have finally sat down to write something in the blog, so now I can't remember what we have been so busy doing.
ahh yes it was Totnes show last weekend so we set up the stall on the Saturday afternoon ready for the show on Sunday.  This is the first time that they have held the show on a Sunday but as the traffic queues were so bad on a Thursday the decision to change days was made.  We had a combined stall with Lakeham Alpacas and Bats brook Alpacas and we took some Llamas as well.  To keep to the best bio security arrangements we could, Bats brook had a pen on one side of the Marquee and we had ours on the other side, so the animals were unable to see each other let alone get within spitting distance.  As it is a small show we were the only Alpaca stand there.  The sun shone and there were lots of people around although it was very slow to start with, I think as it was a Sunday people got up a little later before coming in but they stayed much later and it was after 6pm before we thought about packing up. The rest of the week has been the usual round of feeding up, picking up poo, holiday cottages and a lovely llama walk yesterday.

We or rather Steve has been doing some handling every morning with Merlin the young llama and has got to the stage where we thought we could get him to take a halter.  Firs I showed him the halter and let him sniff it then put the nose band over his nose and just let it rest for a while.  He took this well but drew the line at letting me do it up, he is still very jumpy and I think it is going to be a long process but we are getting there.  I really must get some pictures of this young boy for you to see, her really is very handsome!

Later this morning we had a visit from Inca Picasso from Blacklands Alpacas for a drive by breeding with Marietta.  We had been trying to get Midnight covered by Picasso but for some reason she wasn't too keen, but would sit if you put her in with our Stud Golden Nugget who we had been using for spit offs.  So we made the decision to let her have here way with Nugget and to try Picasso over the very reliable Marietta, who is a much more willing partner, she sat when I let her into the breeding pen and Picasso was only half way down the M5 at the time. so fingers crossed we won't have to take her to Blacklands next week for a repeat meeting.

Just after Blacklands left for home we had some people turn up for a look around and discuss keeping Alpacas which was great as we don't need much encouragement to talk Alpaca all afternoon.