Merry Christmas

I would like to wish everyone a very Merry christmas and a Happy Prosperous New Year. I have really enjoyed reading everyones Bloggs, It is so interesting to hear how different people do things.

I haven't blogged for a while really because it is a very quite time of the year for us and there is only so much you can say about poo picking and general husbandry, but here is a quick update of what has been happening here.

We have weaned all of this years cria and decided to do it differently this year, instead of taking the cria away from the mums and putting them out of sight we took the mums away and leave the cria with the rest of the herd.  This seemed to be less stressful for the cria and the mums didn't really notice that they were missing something when they saw the fresh grass in their new paddock.

It is very muddy here and getting across the chicken pen is a bit like ice skating, I can move the electric fence around except for the bit around the hen houses, so I have to hold onto the house to get around the back to collect the eggs.  Cleaning out is interesting as you can imagine trying to push a wheelbarrow up a very muddy slope, Steve finds this very amusing to watch!

Every year we have a stall at the Christmas market in Widecombe and this year we were asked to take some animals to display next to the Christmas tree.  What with all this mud our animals along with everyone else's are not the most attractive.  So we thought we would take the most attractive ones which would be the weanlings, problem 1 they were not halter trained, problem 2 we needed to get them into the little grassy area at the back of the hall, problem 3 everything is so muddy not easy to get the trailer into some of our paddocks.  So the weanlings are now all halter trained with varying degrees of success, star of the team is Caramel who seemed to know what to do the very first time she had a halter on,  so using Caramel as trainer the other four girls were walked one at a time around the garden and up the lane.  Lalique is pretty good but she has the same temperament as Caramel, being related.  Choc Ice is so small I had to make more holes in the halter to get it to fit properly walks lovely as long as Caramel is in front, difficult if I am trying to walk two on my own, and Tigerlily is surprisingly good considering she is Lily's daughter and Lily is the most loopy, neurotic  Alpaca in the world!  Finally Ivory the oldest, biggest cria is totally useless, so glad she won't be in the show team next year, only reason we got her where we wanted her was she didn't want to be left behind on her own.  So hopefully they will remember some of their training and will not take to much training before the shows next year.

The Market was very cold and pretty damp but we had a reasonable day and as usual lots of interest in the animals.

Today Jazz one of our Llamas was not very well, she was obviously in pain and reluctant to get up when approached which is unusual, she was bouncing around yesterday.  So we took her temperature which was normal so probably not an infection, so it looked to me like it could be a colic or acidosis thing, so as she was in pain we called Richard our Vet who luckily for us was at home so not to far away.  Anyway he gave her something for the pain and some anti spasm drug and said it was probably colic and if it was she would get better or if not it could be a twisted gut in which case she would not get better but he didn't think this was the case as her membranes were normal colour.  Jazz seemed to have improved this afternoon so fingers crossed she will continue to improve.  It is good to know that your own diagnosis's was right and by knowing your animals you can notice when something is not quite right.

I have finally finished  knitting my Christmas presents, this year everyone is getting hand knits as I really don't like Christmas shopping and it gives me an excuse to knit different things.

My operation which was cancelled in November was re scheduled for December 16th and cancelled again has now been booked in for tomorrow, so after messing me about for months they have now ruined my Christmas.  I should be home sometime on Christmas day, hopefully in time for lunch.  We have all the family here for the day so at least Steve will not have to cook or wash up for that matter.