Quarter House Alpacas
August 2009
The last diary entry had us waiting for this year’s births. Maybe it was the hot spell at the end of June, but this year everyone gave birth up to 3 weeks early, number 5 landing just before the weather cooled down. Luckily Bonnie was first with a textbook delivery, when we weren’t even here. We tried various names for her lovely black baby girl, and eventually stuck with Treacle! We should have learnt by now to always expect the unexpected, but after waiting several days while Fleur showed all the signs of giving birth, (which they normally do in the morning), Jane left her for an hour late one afternoon. Sure enough on her return, Fleur had started, but only a head was visible, no legs. This was the same problem as Meg and Hamish the previous year so we knew what needed to be done, but the vet was stuck in Bexhill at the time. Jane had done a hands-on ante-natal Alpaca training course the previous year so she donned the shoulder-length rubber gloves and got stuck in. The result was Tin-Tin, a lovely nut-brown boy, and a quick massage straightened up his legs with no after-effects.
A few days later both Twiggy and Philly gave birth to white cria on the same day. These two seem like twins, spending a great deal of time together, which is just as well because Philly, despite her size has not produced much milk, and her little boy Tonto has taken to sneaking a drink from Twiggy alongside her own little girl Twix.
The final bit of excitement came when Ebony started to deliver her baby rear legs first. Luckily Jane was there this time, and as the vet was again elsewhere, with a few phone instructions, Jane delivered Truffle, a lovely black girl.
During the waiting we finished skirting (cleaning) this year’s fleeces, and this time they are being processed in a mini-mill in Horam and by now they should be back all nicely ‘carded’. This means the fleece will have been combed and washed and will be delivered in even layers of continuous wool, perfect for spinning and for felting, which is what we plan to do with this year’s fleeces. It will be for sale to spinners and other felters too, but we hope to have our own hand-made felted products available by Christmas.
We are also back into the cycle of mating again, as the few lucky chosen studs are matched up with our best females, ready to start the process of creating next year’s cria.
Meanwhile we are keeping a close eye on the new cria, weighing them regularly to make sure they are still putting on weight steadily (over 2 kilos a week). At this time of the year, there is simply nothing nicer than sitting out on warm evening with a cool drink watching the 5 cria racing around the paddocks. Who needs exotic holidays?
You can see pictures of the new cria at www.qhalpacas.co.uk.