Great weekend

We have had a very productive weekend, well Saturday was productive, today has just been lovely.

West Webburn Golden Prospect

Yesterday we were up fairly early as we had planned lots of Alpaca jobs and I had a change over in the holiday cottages to do.  We got everyone fed first, then discovered that we were low on water so this had to be pumped from the stream which runs along the bottom of the field.  Next we rounded up the young male Alpacas, these need to a some halter training refresher course.  There are seven boys in this group and five of them were sold earlier in the year, they will be going off to their new home in the next couple of weeks.  Titan and Calypso are off to join the Carpalla herd near St Austell, they will join their females and it looks like they will be very busy boys this spring, we wish Nigel and Margaret the best of luck with their new vnture.  We are very much looking forward to seeing the resulting cria next year.  The other three boys, Quartz, Felspar and Stephano are going to Fowey as pets, our vet is coming on Tuesday to castrate the two older boys before they leave, Stephano isn't old enough yet.
In preparation for their departure we weighed and wormed all of this group, gave them a good check over looking for any evidence of mite which I am pleased to say there wasn't any and as the sun was shining I managed to get some pics.  I have never tried to take fleece shots so gave that ago as well, Titan is looking great and his fleece is still very crimpy and bright with a very soft handle, he really is a stunning looking Alpaca, we will be sad to see him go.

West Webburn Titan

West Webburn Titan Fleece

The girls have been in their new field for a week now and are all looking very relaxed, instead of galloping in for feed in the mornings it is now a gentle stroll to see if there is anything interesting in the buckets.  We did some fencing in this field yesterday to split off the end which we are going to save for hay.  This was not popular with some of the girls as they seem to prefer to be in that end of the field, but as you can see from the pictures it is a very large field.

As I said today has been less about work and more about relaxing, this morning Vicky and I and the two Grandsons took Grit the pony back to his owner and had a little handling training.  Grit has been quite a naughty pony and played up when we arrived.  So he was picked out to demonstrate how he should behave, after a few minutes he was behaving beautifully and was handed back to me to try.  Once I had got the body language right it was simple I had him walking , standing and going back and he was so good, might try it with the llamas tomorrow.  After all this fun Steve picked us up and we went to the pub for a big family get together which was very nice, great to see family from America.

New field

Another weekend over but the weather looks set to continue for this week, the job list doesn't seem to get any shorter, in fact the more you do the more you find to do!