One last thing

Right that's that then Christmas is over for another year. The decorations came down today, the remains of the turkey went in the bin yesterday and it is only a week until Angus's birthday. Time moves on and so must we. But before we do I am going to go off on one about Christmas, I've got a right old monk on about it and I need to get it off my chest, so here goes.

Hopefully after this minor Patou rage there will be no mention of Christmas until December next year. There will be of course, in this ever impatient world that we live in there will be plenty of Christmas talk before December 2012. Was it October last year that the shops started covering everything in tinsel?
If I had my way, anyone, individual, organisation or whatever that makes mention of Christmas before December the 1st at the very earliest should be taken away to a place where they should be hanged from the neck until they are dead. Honestly, they should. They are spoiling it for those of us who have restraint. It's not that I don't like Christmas, I do, I love it! I just wish that we as a nation (is it the whole world?) could stop being so bloody needy! Why can't we just wait? Why such a long build up? Collectively, as a nation, just exactly how old are we? Grrrrrrrrr!!!!!!

A deep breath........and relax. Thank you I feel better now.

So now to all things alpaca. We are now less than three months away from the arrival of the first cria of 2012. The first ever Van Diemen Qjori of Patou baby will hopefully arrive before the end of March.
The mother of the first one will be Dee, our 14 year old Chilean girl and mother to our top brown girl from last year, Reeya (in fact she's the best we have ever produced and she still looks fabulous!) so we have high hopes from the start, no pressure then Qjori!

After the first one we have a steady spread of births until the end of June when the last one is due. Our initial predictions of 16 births took a small hit a few weeks ago when The Lord Lieutenant of Chilfrome Timothy Twinkletoes arrived with the scanner. Thirteen nicely pregnant but three, Lily, Fifi and Rosa had lost their pregnancies somewhere along the way. Still a busy enough year for us part-timers. There will be 22 females in total to get pregnant this year so we have to get our thinking caps on to decide the mating strategy. We will be using black males over our black females this year and the rest really depends on what Qjori produces.  We will be making fluid rolling decisions as we progress through the Spring and early Summer.

Patou 'Roger' Resilient.

As far as the show team goes, well this year we appear to be very male heavy. Qjori will have the year off after his splendid show season in 2011 which means intermediate browns Roger Resilient and Rafiki will step up. We have just been out for a fleece check and they are both looking very nice thank you. Woody and Sultana, I mean Sultan, are still looking good for the junior brown male berths and that about wraps it up. Reeya is still looking stunning but she is due to give birth on the 30th of May which is cutting it a bit fine. So four brown boys it is then!

Rafiki striking a pose last year.

The weather here has been pretty grim, as with everywhere else, trees down, torrential rain, mud, mud and more mud. However, life must go on and Sue and I were out yesterday giving everyone their monthly AD&E injections. It was very pleasing to see that everyone is holding their condition, we must have the feeding regime about right.

We do have one casualty, first time mum Minstrel has a nasty sprain to her front right leg. The bottom joint is swollen and hot. She is weight bearing on it and getting around in a sort of hoppy 'I don't want to be doing this' type of way. We are treating her with anti-inflammatories and will see how things develop. I'm sure she is a victim of the slippery muddy slopes we have here.

Minstrel and Sherwood photographed last summer.

Right, enough of this mundaneness. I have things to do and places to go. Adios!