Another one!

First of all may I say thank you for all the comments and e-mails about the land situation. It is heartwarming to know that whatever happens we will all be ok. Thank you.

We missed another birth yesterday and I am a bit cross about it as I didn't check the girls properly. Stand still you fat bugger whilst I hoof you up the arse! Impossible as always, but I will keep on trying, another dressing down and I have learned my lesson.

This was Patou Polly, she has featured in a previous blog as being the next likely to go and she did. In the pouring rain and the howling wind she gave birth to yet another brown female! I anticipate that we arrived on scene within the hour of the birth and the little thing was running around. When I did manage to catch her she made a noise that I have never heard a cria make before, it was a real scream. She's a bit feisty this one I thought.We wanted to get them into the shed for a couple of hours so she could get dry and have complete attention from Polly who is a first time mum. Give her the best possible start in life I reckon and then let them do the rest. Anyway we got them into the shed and then the two of them spent the next ten minutes escaping. Not trying to escape but actually escaping. First the baby dived through the bars of the gate and had it away on her toes, then Polly spotted a gap and leapt for it. They were both gone in a flash and Sue and I were left in the shed farting about with scales and iodine spray and no alpacas!

We reinforced the gate with a stack of bales and rounded them up again, all the time the rain poured. This time we were able to contain them and carried out the necessary as quickly as we could before leaving them to bond.

Please allow me to introduce Patou Spirit, a floppy eared bundle of energy weighing in at 8.22 kilos. She had been baked for 347 days and is a beautiful medium brown female.

Here she is with her mum, Polly. Now at this point I must shout from the rooftops the acheivement of her sire, our own Cambridge Columbus. Good old Clump was given a brief when he started working, "brown females please, as many as you can muster old boy. It will be tough as we will be using some light coloured females but give it your best shot", I remember the conversation well.

So how is the Clumpmeister doing? Well he has 9 cria on the ground, 7 of them being female. Out of those nine, seven of them are also brown and the remainder dark fawn. Now that is a pretty good stab at following the brief! I think it's because he is German. He isn't German of course, I know that, but for some strange reason I think of him as being German. Der Clumpmeister is what I call him and I do find myself using my slightly rusty schoolboy German on him when we are alone together. Angus and I have a very oft repeated phrase here in Patouland, 'Ja, das ist gut ja!' Vell, das ist gut Herr Clumpmeister! (apologies for any linguistic errors to any German speakers).

Other news here is that all the boys have now moved in with Qjori. The Clumpmeister remains on his own as he is not very sociable but the other seven boys are now on Qjori territory. He seems quite bemused by them all. There are five weanlings and two older wethers and Qjori seems to spend rather a lot of the time either ignoring them completely or staring at them with a look that says(in his Australian accent)  'Where the **** have you lot come from?'

Qjori is in the background here with the young boys at the fence talking to Josh.  A few seconds later, as Qjori approached, all tails rose in a little silent salute of respect. Nice.

Right enough drivel, must be time for breakfast.