Grey day

What a miserable day it has been. As grey as my oldest pair of underpants.

It has drizzled here for most of the day and that has frustrated me in that I was unable to complete my full list of jobs. All there was on the television was the boring old golf and the boring old cricket. What I have to endure some days, it's terrible!

However, yesterday after three years of alpaca ownership we had our first case of the squits, loose bowel movements, runny bottom, call it anything you like apart from the 'd' word which I seem to spell a different way each time I write it.


Poor old Patou Fifi our fawn Wirococha's Dream girl was horrendously filthy at her rear end. That's her with some old bloke in the little arty picture that accompanies the blog. She doesn't seem to have lost any weight, seems to be acting normally and the rest of the mighty Patou seem fine.


I immediatley investigated in case there was another reason for the state she was in but there was no doubt in my mind. She was clean at the back the day before, her fleece was without twigs etc and it just looked like d......d.......that she had the squits.


Sue was at work so Elvie our 'alpaca watcher' and midwife colleague of Sue's kindly came over to give me a hand. Fifi was washed and trimmed thoroughly and dosed up with Baycox Bovis (coccidiosis), Ivomec Super (injectable wormer), Nuflor (antibiotic) and Kaolin ('firming agent'). In effect she had the works to cover all bases.


I have just been out to check her and she seems fine, still clean and looking absolutely normal. We will keep an eye on her but it appears that whatever nastiness was there has departed. Splendid, I don't like it when they are unwell.


The cria all seem to be thriving I put a coat back on the latest edition 'Minna' to give her a bit of protection against the drizzle but the rest are growing fleece fast.

However, there appears to be a real 'livewire' amongst the fluffy foursome. Orchard Blackjack after a slow start is now a right little terror. He is constantly badgering the others to play with him. Patou Jonah who is almost twice his size is charged at, jumped on, bitten, chased, rolled over and generally harassed until he joins in. The two of them then neck wrestle ending up with the grand finale of standing nose to nose spitting at each other. There's no spit of course just air accompanied by a sort of sneezing noise, highly amusing.