Waiting for the pinger

Like most people, we have an oven. And a hob. In fact it is a cooker, two ovens, four halogen hob things, you know the sort of thing. It is on or in this appliance that we cook our food. Which we then eat, obviously. The cooker also has a 'pinger'. The pinger goes 'ping' at the end of the cooking time that we have allotted for the cooking of the chicken, sausages, rice, potatoes, baguettes etc. Actually it is more of a beeping noise but in this house, in the land of Patou, we call it 'the pinger'. Without it things would surely burn or dry out or generally overcook. It is a fundamental piece of life here. It tells us when things are ready and that it is time to get them either off the hob or out of the oven. I can't actually hear it anymore, so I need Angus, who has young highly functioning ears to tell me when the 'pinger' is 'pinging'.

So why am I telling you all this nonsense about cookers and pingers? 

Well it is for the simple reason we have come to the beginning of the next round of birthing. We have four females on or around the 340 day mark. They don't have 'pingers' unfortunately so we have to watch and wait. So, we are watching and waiting.

So to the 'cookers'. Firstly our two 'whiteys', Alice (pictured below) has a Qjori cria on board, I am confidently predicting a brown female here. She produced a brown male last year, so it follows that she will produce a brown female this year, simple.

Dilly is also looking rather wide at the moment and is also carrying a Qjori cria. I can't see anything other than another brown female here, she had a fawn Columbus female last year (Sahara, in the background) so it just has to be a brown female this year, definitely.

Then on to Millie (daughter of Lily my favourite alpaca in the whole wide world). Millie is carrying a Qjori cria. She had a fawn Jack male last year so another easy one to predict, a brown female this time around. Stands to reason.

The fourth 'cooker', Polly, a fawn Centurion girl, is pictured below. She has collapsed on top of Bobby and they both lay there grunting gently to each other for about ten minutes. Whoever said that alpacas can't stand touching each other? Here is Bobby, one of the 'Hair-trigger spit monster' family allowing a junior female to place her rather swollen nether regions across her neck. Whilst she was there I watched the pokings of two little feet near the opening. Polly is also carrying a Qjori cria. She had a brown female cria last year so we can expect nothing else really. It just makes sense, brown female for sure, I've seen it getting ready to depart.

Now in case you are getting the wrong picture here, we don't just do males here in Patouland. Truffle remember, was our first cria of the year, a brown Qjori female.