Three Lucky People

Well its back to normal today (well hopefully! - awful weather to start with!!) Christmas and New Year celebrations behind us and everyone going back to normal working hours, we now look forward to what 2012 will bring.

As my previous post showed we had a very busy 2011, both down on the farm and in own family life.

We start the year with two lucky people/families joining our "Adopt an Alpaca" scheme and a lucky lady receiving a gift voucher for "Spinning Lessons".  These lucky people have received our gift vouchers purchased from their loved ones for a Christmas Gift and a Birthday Gift (what a lovely gift to receive).

http://www.cotswoldvalealpacas.co.uk/specialgiftsforsale.html

Its lovely to be able to give people the chance to get involved with our alpacas, especially when they are not in a position to buy their own.  And to teach someone the joy of producing something from their gorgeous fleece.

So what is in store for us this year? what are our aims for the year?

• Carry on building our dream farm and business
• have lots off healthy alpacas and cria running around our fields
• arrange some experience/training days
• another open day?
• develop our alpaca products for sale
• shearing
• maybe show a couple of our alpacas??
• find a nice stud for our two BG's and have some little baby pygmy goats running around the farm!
• AND hopefully follow another one of my dreams - to breed quality German shepherds.  Last year we bought Tia who has an outstanding family tree (so we need to get Tia hip scored first, and hopefully if they results are good start looking for a nice stud male for her)
• Millie will probably have another litter of pups this year, as last year she was a fantastic mum and produced some fantastic little Jack Russell pups, who were much sought after
• Kittens??

Just some of the things we are looking forward to and I am sure there will lots of other things in between!!

So looking forward, we look forward to the days getting longer, the spring to arrive and the sun to shine, along with all the new births excitably wait for!!

Here comes 2012!!!!!!

Well that's enough of sitting on the laptop (not literally) its now got light, its horrible out there! but can't put it off any longer, I must go a feed those hungry mouths they are waiting for their breakfast (lets hope I don't get blown away!!)

Bye for now

Shearing

Well the shearing is all done, we had a great day. The shearers were brilliant as always, quick, caring and efficient.

Its not a day I enjoy, watching the alpacas stretched out on the mats, but I know it has to be done and its the kindest way to do it. And once its all over they all seem to settle down very quickly.

Although it didnt rain, we did have a bit of a wind problem (of course thats weather wind not personal wind!!) but being in the barn worked well. It all went a lot smoother with the help of my brilliant Sister Anne and her husband Andy, as it cant be quite frantic at times keeping up with the shearers!!

We also had some lovely people come to watch the big event, some lovely ladies from the Walsall Spinners, who went home with some lovely fleece hot of the alpacas backs lol and some very happy and keen proud new owners of three lovely boys, who also went home with their boys fleeces hot of their backs.

Here's a couple of photos kindly send to me by my visitors, I was so busy, although I had the camera handy, just didnt have time to stop and take photos.

I was a bit worried the next day, as it rained all day!! and the poor alpacas had no coats on!! I wanted to go out and put little rugs on them, but didnt have enough lol.

But on Tuesday, they were all very happy to have no fleece on as it got very hot again.



So thats important date number 1 over, now to important date number 2 - Open day!!

Ginnie