Happy New Year from all at Cotswold Vale Alpacas :-)
Apologies for the lack of blogs, its been a very busy time and I never seemed to have 5 minutes to update the blog!
I must say I am not sorry to see the back of 2012 and all the rain, mud and more mud!!!! Hopefully 2013 is going to be a bit drier (please) all the animals seem to be doing ok even if they don't look their best!! A couple of the nursing girls could do with a bit more meat on them and are having additional feeds to help.
We have flooded a couple of times!! unfortunately even though we do have drainage ditches with the amount of rain that has been falling all at once, and due to use being at the end of the line we end up getting a back log of water coming back into the land!! We did realise we needed to extend the ditches and put in a couple of balancing ponds, but due to the amount of rain we have had, we didn't actually get any proper dry periods to get the diggers in, so we delayed it and unfortuanetly we paid for this in the run up to Christmas. But thankfully it didn't do too much damage.
So first on the list of jobs to get done is the drainage!! so fingers crossed for some dry weather this year.
The alpacas all have a big barn to come into, split into sections for the boys & the girls, with lots of lovely hay & haylage (although they seem to prefer it out in the field during the day even though there is very little grass available, but if we shut them in they just stand at the gate gazing out into the fields!!
Mind you I am looking forward the lighter mornings and to the time when they start staying out at night a bit more, they are so, so messy, too lazy to go outside to do their business, just making big piles in the barn for me to clear up everyday, but its the pee on top of the poo that makes such a mess!!
Well thats it for now, hopefully wont be as long to the next up-date.
Apologies for the lack of blogs, its been a very busy time and I never seemed to have 5 minutes to update the blog!
I must say I am not sorry to see the back of 2012 and all the rain, mud and more mud!!!! Hopefully 2013 is going to be a bit drier (please) all the animals seem to be doing ok even if they don't look their best!! A couple of the nursing girls could do with a bit more meat on them and are having additional feeds to help.
We have flooded a couple of times!! unfortunately even though we do have drainage ditches with the amount of rain that has been falling all at once, and due to use being at the end of the line we end up getting a back log of water coming back into the land!! We did realise we needed to extend the ditches and put in a couple of balancing ponds, but due to the amount of rain we have had, we didn't actually get any proper dry periods to get the diggers in, so we delayed it and unfortuanetly we paid for this in the run up to Christmas. But thankfully it didn't do too much damage.
So first on the list of jobs to get done is the drainage!! so fingers crossed for some dry weather this year.
The alpacas all have a big barn to come into, split into sections for the boys & the girls, with lots of lovely hay & haylage (although they seem to prefer it out in the field during the day even though there is very little grass available, but if we shut them in they just stand at the gate gazing out into the fields!!
Mind you I am looking forward the lighter mornings and to the time when they start staying out at night a bit more, they are so, so messy, too lazy to go outside to do their business, just making big piles in the barn for me to clear up everyday, but its the pee on top of the poo that makes such a mess!!
Well thats it for now, hopefully wont be as long to the next up-date.
