Sunday 29th April - Good bye to Dan

Today we delivered Dan, our young male alpaca to his new home. He's now living on an 80 acre farm with 3 other male alpacas and 100s of White Faced Woodland sheep. He took no getting into the trailer and travelled really well. When he met his new friends, he ran straight to them to sniff and see who they all were. When we left there was no backward look to watch us go. Too many new things to do, sheep to watch, chickens to chase, new mates to play with. Considering he just left his mum that morning, he seems O.K. His mum Eloise, appears to be fine about him going, happily munching the grass with Bella and Elli.

This week we have had a couple of lambs that have been limping, when we checked them out nothing appeared to be wrong. They have more than likely got it running around with the lamb gang.

We also moved the ewes and lambs into a new paddock, only to discover that the fence between them and the paddock the the female alpacas is high enough for little lambs to crawl under to see the alpacas, but then too small for them the get back to their mums!!!! Lambs are very stupid at times. So we spent a very peaceful 1/2 hour dropping the netting so that the little horrors can't get through. Shetland lambs are great escapologists.

We found out today that one of our friends and great Shetland sheep breeders are drastically reducing their stock of sheep, due to ill health. Needless to say we have registered our interest in at least 6 of their ewes. Watch this space to see how many we finally end up with!!!!!!

Update on the barn cats from the Cats Protection league. Being feral cats they are taking some catching. So once they are caught they will let us know. Talking of cats, next door's cat decide to have her 3 kittens in the female alpaca's hay rack. Caused the alpacas complete confusion. Needless to say we very carefully took the cat and her kittens back home.

Hopefully a quiet week before the onslaught of the bank holiday weekend and the arrival of the resident vandal. Denise has been talked into showing a group of school kids how to spin and shear a sheep on Wednesday!!!!!

Denise

Denise