I am horrified - Eating Alpaca!!

Purely by accident I came across this article in Stoud News & Journal Local Company given a licence to Sell Alpaca Meat!! I am absolutely horrified!!

How could any alpaca breeder say there alpacas is not suitable for breeding and sell them to be slaughtered and sold for eating!!

One of the main reasons I went into breeding alpacas was the fact I didnt need to breed for slaughter!!

Busy, Busy, Busy and Time flys By!

Another very busy week with very little time to stop and blog!

We had our very first Craft Fayre on Sunday with mixed results! For the very first time we took two of our boys out to meet the public and to sell some of our alpaca hand-made items.

We took Cosmo and Ewen who are two of our stud males, they were amazing and so well behaved, lots of people enjoyed getting up close and personal to the boys and enjoyed having a feel of their fleece.

There were lots of people enjoying a sunny day out, but not too many people buying, I did ok selling two of my felted bags and several smaller items, but my sister and many of the other stall holders didn't have many sales :-(

Here is a photo of Cosmo with one of his many admirers, Jayne is a very huge fan of Alpacas.

Our next trip out will be on 3rd September to a Charity Fun Day, so we are looking forward to this.


We had some lovely visitors yesterday who came along to meet the Alpacas and look at their fleece, I am sure they enjoyed their visit and went home with a gorgeous fleece, I know they will enjoy spinning it and make some lovely items from it. For more about their visit you can go to: Lucy 'in the Sky' - "A Real Alpaca Adventure"  where Lucy has done a brilliant account with photos of their visit to Cotswold Vale Alpacas.

Well I must get back to work down on the Alpaca Farm so until next time, bye for now.

Ginnie :-)

Dexter update.

It has been another very busy week or so!! But I can now report that our little Dexter is doing ok. After a few very hairy days, he has gone from strength to strength. He is now 11 days old and I feel a bit more confident in doing this update blog on him.

After two days of bottle feeding him and milking mum, on the third day we eventually managed to get him to understand where mummy's milk bar was.

His first two days were quite hairy!! He took the bottle well, but was not standing and moving around very much, so I needed to go out every hour to remind him to get up and move around. He was extremely down on his pasterns and it made him look like he was walking with great big hob nail boots on.

We had given him plasma and colosturum on his first day so we new he was covered from infection, but his temperature seemed to be going up and down, so after collecting anti-biotics from the vet he seemed to stabalise, unfortunately he then got diarrhea! now this could have been due to getting too much milk (as he did seem to take his bottle very well) or due to the antibiotics upsetting his natural bacteria within his gut, as anti-biotics kills good bacteria aswell as the bad ones!

So another visit to the vets to collect some Pro-Kolin + and some Lactosym Natural Live Symbiotic, both were to help settle everything down in the gut and help stop the trots the poor chap was suffering from.

We had kept him and mum in a pen in the field as mum was not easy to catch hold off when we needed to. On the third day he much stronger so I took the decision to stop bottle feeding him and see if we could encourage him to seek milk from mum, as I had been going out and feeding him every two hours he really didnt feel hungry and feel the need to seek milk from mum. (this was not an easy decision as I felt extremely mean doing it, but was ready to step in and feed him if he started to fade in anyway.)

We went out on the hour to milk mum a little into a bottle, we wiped milk around her teats so he would be able to smell it and then we gave him the bottle with mums milk, once he had the taste we then stood him in the right position.

After a couple of hours of doing this he was getting the idea and had started to seek out the milk bar, by lunch time he was feeding, but we still needed to go out and remind him to get up and move around.

By late afternoon he was feeding very well so I let them out into the field with the rest of the herd, this seem to encourage him to start moving a lot more, and by the evening he had start to have a little run around.

So here is our little Dexter. (sorry the photo quality is not too good)

Whitney and Vanilla Ice saying hello to Dexter.

He is a lovely chap and we can only hope he will carrying on get stronger and stronger.

Just one more baby due and that will be it for this year, which is alway sad, but will be a relief we know all the babies have arrived and are safe and thriving.

Ginnie

Another Worrying Time

We had another birth yesterday, Emily gave birth to a little boy. This was Emily's first cria and she is not a very big girl, she had quite a hard time and was running out of energy, she was lay on her side pushing and pushing and in the end needed assistance to deliver his shoulders, with a pull while she contracted we managed to get the shoulders out and then with a final push he had arrived in this world.

He is lovely light fawn boy with the longest curliest fleece I have seen this year. Within 10 minutes he was sat up and look liked he was going to fine but that was as far as he was willing to go!!

Although Emily was 350 days and he weighted 8kg, he still appeared to be premature, his teeth have not come through yet, he had membrane still attached to his mouth and he had little flippers on his feet.

Emily is normally a real placid girl, but she had suddenly turned into a vicious monster, spitting and stamping, and charging with her teeth fully beared at anyone who attempted to approached her baby, this being alpaca or human.

So we stepped back and watched from afar, but after a hour we tried to encourange him to move, he did stand and walk for a minute, but promptly sat down again. He did eventually start to get up and move around, although in a very clumpsy way he looked like he had long boots on and found it difficult to walk, this was due to him being very down on his pasterns.

About 7pm he was over 5 hours old and still had not fed, or even attempted to feed, so I defrosted the plasma and gave him it in a bottle, which he happily drank, this perked him up a bit but at 9pm he still wasn't attempting to feed from mum, so I then gave him a bottle of milk.

Got up this morning not knowing what I would find, he was still with us, but still not feeding from mum.

So today I have taken over mums job with the bottle, he takes it well, but still doesnt get up for very long. The vet gave me antibiotic injections to give him to cover him for any other infections.

So please meet "Cotswold Vale Dexter"

I couldnt make up my mind if to blog about him, but I think he deserves a blog, we are doing all we can and at the end of the day mother nature will decide his fate (brave words I know, and I wont sleep much tonight and will not look forward to going out to the barn in the morning!)

Ginnie

Busy Time

Not have had much time to blog this week, we have been very busy since my last blog (or RANT)and a lot has happened.

We have been busy head collar/Lead training the young boys from last year, especially Polo, Levi & Quartz who will be soon going off to their new home.

Their new owners are coming for a visit tonight and some training. They will be moving to their very nice new home next weekend.

We have also been busy with new arrivals, arriving at various times of the day from 7.55am in the morning to 7pm at night!!

First one of our Suri girls, Emma gave birth to a lovely fawn boy. Its was a early birth for us he arrived at 7.55am it was a classic birth and he was up and feeding very quickly. We were very pleased with his arrival as his sire was from outside our herd so this could possibily bring new blood to the girls if he carrys on how he has started, one word for him gorgeous.

Cotswold Vale Zeus

The next to give birth was Ipsy, she is our oldest girl and a bit of a grumpy old madame. She had been sitting around a lot during the day, but she had been doing this for days but she waited until 7pm to give birth, rather late for a birth!! She gave birth to a beautiful girl, the birth was fine, and the after birth followed straight after the cria, there was a lot of blood down her legs, being difficult to catch we needed to get her down to the barn to wash of the blood to stop the flys bothering her.

But she was not having any of it, it tooks us half an hour to get her down there!! we checked her teats for wax and she had plenty of milk, then washed her legs down. By this time is was after 8pm and she just wasnt interested in standing still for baby to feed, every time she found the right place ipsy would move, more interested in eating the grass in the pen, I can only assume she had been uncomfortable for a long time and was now very hungry. At nine she still wasnt letting her feed and I was getting concerned as the light was beginning to fade. So I decided to give the cria some plazma as I didnt feel she was going to get her colostrum.

We shut them in the barn and I just prayed that Ipsy would feed her, in the morning I let them out into the pen, the cria was very bright and I saw her feed a couple of time, so decided it would be safe to let them out into the field with the herd. They ran up the field to greet the rest of the herd, and she has gone from strength to strength. (again I thank goodness we are on site and were there for the birth, I'm not convinced she would have survived without our intervention.)

Cotswold Vale Amber

Then on 29th July 11 at 2.30 Beau deliver us a gorgeous little girl, I had been waiting in anticipation for this delivery. Beau had been mated with Efron our Suri Stud male and I had been hoping and praying for a little girl, well we were not disappointed, she is amazing, her coat is the colour of chestnut and I have never felt anything so soft and silky.

Although the delivery seemed to be a classic delivery, once born she really worried me, she was breathing but lay with her legs outstretched and she just shook from head to toe. She never wriggled or moved, just lay and shook!

I gave her a good rub with a towel, but still she never attempted to wriggle or sit up! I checked her temperature and it wasnt too bad at 37.6 I gave her some lamb start and I decided to carry her into the barn to get her out of the breeze and see if she warmed up a bit we would get moving.

After 45 minutes she still was still not trying to sit up, so I sat her up and surrounded her with straw to support her and keep her warm. After an hour still she just sat not moving, getting more and more concerned I called the vet, they told me I had done everything I could and if she wasn't up in half hour to try and hold her up and see if she would feed.

Half hour went by and all of a sudden she was up and moving, it was as if she had just woken up, she went from strength to strength was feeding and getting stronger on her feet, a couple of hours later I let them back out into the field and she hasn't looked back.Cotswold Vale Bella.

Cotswold Vale Bella

And finally on 5th August quite by surprise as she wasn't 335 days until the 10th Ana went into labour, I had been up the field to check on Emily who is now well over due, but she showed no sign of anything happening, so we did some more head collar training on the boys. This took about half hour, then on the way back to the mobile I noticed Ana going around in circles and there appeared to be something bulging out the back, I walked up the field and yes in deed she was in labour, within all of ten minutes she gave birth to a stunning little boy.

As yet we have not named him, but he is very strong, up and feeding within half hour and now is already running around the field with the rest of this year babies.

As yet I haven't managed to get a good picture of him yet, so this will come in a following blog.

Well that has been quite a week or more, we now have five boys and five girls born this year, and we are waiting on just two more.

Watch this space.

Ginnie