MH - anyone heard of it?

It would appear that I have been blogless for the past month.
I think I am probably correct in saying that this is my longest absence since I started writing about the ups and downs of life amongst the Mighty Patou herd.
I always wonder when one of the regular alpaca bloggers is absent for a week or two, always suspecting that it is because of a 'down' moment. Well if you were thinking that of my absence you would be spot on. To be perfectly frank the last few weeks have been amongst the lowest since we formed the Patou herd 9 years ago.
As a result I just didn't want to write about alpacas, I didn't want to talk about alpacas, I didn't even want to think about alpacas, in fact there have been moments when I just wished that they would all go away, as one problem after another manifested itself seemingly without a break in between.
I know others have been through much, much worse situations, heartbreaking life altering scenarios and in a way I feel guilty for mentioning our problems, which are relatively minor in comparison but I can only write truthfully and honestly about our experiences in the hope that it helps someone. It is probably going to help me to write about it, therapeutic I suppose, so here goes.

Anyway we seem to have come through our 'bad patch' and now with the wounds (literally) healing I can look back and try to learn something from what has been going on.

In short, in numbers alone, we have lost five cria, one two year old female and a yearling male. That, in numbers alone is a huge hit for us to take and to understand. Every death has been for a different reason which kind of puts into perspective the feeling that we just couldn't believe something else life threatening had come up. I can't remember how many times I have uttered the words "What next?" over the past few weeks.
I won't go into each and every case but will say that we have had congenital defects, infections, abnormalities and a good measure of bad luck.

We have lost cria before, we have had still borns, lost early ones and have accepted that sometimes it is just not meant to be, in short, it happens. I know that. It is part and parcel of breeding animals. But in nine years of breeding we have never lost an adult and as a result it was a huge shock.

I will go into details because she died of something that I had never heard of before and I feel that it is worth 'sharing'.
The alpaca was a lovely dark brown girl called Tabitha. She was the sort of alpaca who you hardly ever noticed, quiet, calm, anonymous within the herd. I blogged earlier about her cria, QT, who was our mystery cria this year, totally unexpected when he arrived, investigation required to work out who is father was.
QT himself developed a bladder/urethra problem when he was 5 weeks old and heartbreakingly after ten days I asked for him to be euthanised to put him out of his pain. A post mortem revealed a urethra that had closed up, he was unable to pee but spent all day trying. We tried everything we could to put him right.

Naturally Tabitha moped around for a couple of days after her cria was taken away, as you would expect and then out of the blue I found her collapsed in the field.
It became obvious very quickly that she was severely anaemic and the vet was called straight away. Apart from the anaemia she had also gone blind (due to the anaemia). She was in good body condition with normal pelleted poop. A rapid blood test was carried out revealing a PCV (packed cell volume) of 6%, which is very, very low. Fecal test was normal. An even faster blood transfusion followed with good old Priscilla providing a couple of pints of claret.

The suspected cause of the anaemia was something called Mycoplasma Haemolamae. Basically as I understand it, it is a bacteria that attaches itself to the wall of the red blood cells and causes the host to attack its own blood cells. It is a blood borne disease spread by biting insects. She was prescribed daily Engemycin (Tetracycline) injections and we waited, hoping she would recover.

Tabitha initially picked up and was eating and drinking well but after five days she started to deteriorate and 48 hours later she died. A subsequent PCR test confirmed the presence of Mycoplasma Haemolamae.

If you Google Mycoplasma Haemolamae there is plenty of information about it, mainly from the USA where many alpacas succumb to it every year.

I promise that my next blog will be on a more cheery note.

All in the eye of the beholder?

Something has been gnawing away at me for some time now and I just can't shake it off. It's nothing important to anyone else, no one else cares a jot, just me and I simply can not let it lie. I spoke to Sue about it....again....last night and was told in no uncertain terms to 'just let it go'. But I can't, it bothers me.
So, as I have shared everything else with you lot I will share this also. Sue is at work so by the time she reads this it will be too late, there is no real censorship going on here, my blog, my thoughts, the good, the bad and of course, the ugly.You won't care about it, it doesn't actually make any difference to anyone apart from me and even then it is only in my mind, but, and this is why I have to share my feelings, I just can't let it go!

Firstly I am a big believer in the premise that the judge is always right on the day. Animals change from week to week and it is in the ring, on the day, that they are being judged. I have no problem with results in the ring. I may disagree sometimes, but I still accept the judges decision. I have no problem with that, it is a difficult job and I respect anyone who does it, I couldn't do it.

What is bothering me is the performance of our two grey boys in the show rings this year. They won't be shown again this year as they are too young for The Ellingham Show, which is the last show that we are going to, so if and when they appear in the ring again this will all be long gone and forgotten.

We had two grey boys born last year, both sired by Qjori. A mid grey, Patou Vickery, (mother a white female, Tisbury Dilly) and Patou Wasimba, a rose grey sired by the fawn Patou Sahara (daughter of Dilly).
They both should have been brown females, obviously, but they were grey and we are beginning to like the greys down here in Patouland.

Patou Vickery - medium grey.

Patou Wasimba - rose grey

So, what is my problem I hear you shout! Well, before either of them entered a show ring, they were selected by Sue and me to be in the show team, something that we, as alpaca breeders, all do. To be honest, initially I didn't know what colour Wasimba was but as he grew his fleece became a lovely even mix of brown and white fibres, he was a rose grey. Vickery was easier to assess, he was grey from the word go.

Both were put in the show team but I believed and still do believe that Wasimba was the better alpaca. His fleece was denser, softer, brighter and had a tighter crimp. So to recap, before they entered the competitive arena I had already decided that Wasimba was better. I must also point out that I have had no judge training and was only basing my decision on my limited experience.

The two boys competed in three shows in front of three different judges and each time, to my great frustration, Wasimba was placed one position behind Vickery. I just could not understand it.
So, and this is where I get a bit naughty, I asked two other BAS judges, both who I hold in very high esteem to have a look at the two boys. I didn't give away anything of my views prior to their inspections and was very pleased when they both put Wasimba ahead of Vickery, easily.
Now, once again I must point out that this was not under show conditions and I understand that alpacas have to be judged on the day, in the ring but it is interesting that my view on who was the better animal was shared.
Fleece statistics can tell us something about the alpacas too, Wasimba's fleece is finer by 2 microns.
Right, that is it I have got it off my chest and will now 'Let it go'.

So to other news down here in Patouland. This week I made a momentous trip out on the road to visit Andy and Viv Walker at Reddingvale alpacas. Of course it is always momentous visiting Andy and Viv but this trip was extra momentous as it was the first time that I have travelled with two Patou herdsires on board. On this occasion Qjori was joined by his son, Patou Tsar, a very special boy here in Patouland, who has made the grade and has recently started his working life.

It was an interesting experience as they were in pens separated by a walkway in which we stood. On one side was the deafening warrior like roar of Qjori orgling away as he dominated the Reddingvale female allotted to to him. On the other side was the sight of Tsar clinging limpet-like to the back end of surely one of the biggest females in the UK whilst he did his job in almost complete silence. It was like being deaf in one ear.

Patou Tsar, what a journey we have had with him over the last two years!

That is all.

From brown to lime green!

It's all been go, go, go here in Patouland, the mighty herd has grown by ten and at the same time been reduced by ten.
At the end of last month I took a trailer of 8 home bred Patou warriors across the channel to Calais where I was to meet up with some lovely breeders from Belgium. It was an interesting experience as up until the point where we transferred the alpacas from my trailer to theirs I was very businesslike about the whole thing. Well OK maybe the shorts didn't look terribly businessman-like. Then, when they came out of my trailer and made the short trip to the other I suddenly became quite emotional, so much so that I couldn't speak for a few moments and my vision became a little blurry.
We said goodbye to six boys, Todd, Thor, Talisker, Wellington, Vincenzo and Wilbur and two girls Una and Verity. Too much in one go for a simpleton like me to cope with emotionally. Still, I am happy that they will all be going to good homes where they will be looked after properly. Not my favourite part of breeding alpacas.

We also said goodbye to Woody and Rafiki who went to a lovely home the other side of Salisbury, we will be seeing them again which is great.

So to my favourite part! We now have ten cria on the ground, six of them females. At the moment all are wonderfully healthy. Little Bijou is back to her lively self and we have been able to withdraw from all top up bottle feeds.

Here are a few pictures of some wonderful brownness!

Patou Bijou, back to full fitness. We think it was Coccidia that caused her listlessness, lack of appetite and thirst.

 Patou Drambuie, a very handsome young man with a great head shape. Branson in the background nibbling Sue's fleece, he is always nibbling something.

 From left to right, Finnegan (light, light brown), Pepper and Branson.

QT and Delilah, QT seems to try and shag anything that moves and moments after this picture was taken he was trying to get Bannock (aged 14yrs and very tall) down onto the ground. It was a very bold move, which was ultimately unsuccessful.

And so to the latest arrival, Patou Nutmeg. Last year we had four females pregnant to Popham Thunder, all four gave birth to males. They were all remated to Thunder and yesterday the first of them gave birth. Samantha produced a lovely dark brown female who we are delighted with.

And finally, I went to Leicestershire last weekend for a school reunion at Ratcliffe College. It was a superb weekend until the mighty Land Rover once again blew up, this time substitute the M25 for the M1. Anyway to cut a very long story short the AA managed to get me towed off the M1 but then took a further 4 hours to get a mechanic to me. I was urged by one of the many AA call centre operatives that I spoke to (I spoke to most of them I reckon) to make a complaint and as a result I was whisked away in a taxi on Monday to a car hire centre where I had a lime green Seat Leon FR thrust upon me, all at the expense of the AA. As you can see it is highly visible and as I have found, goes rather faster than my old Discovery! I have had comments and odd looks where ever I have been, especially at school pick up time. I'm sure I heard someone muttering something about a mid life crisis!

Have I reached mid life yet?

It's all on the QT.

Finally after a hugely busy couple of weeks I get time to sit down and update you all with news from Patouland.
We now have 9 cria on the ground, 5 females and 4 males. Colour wise we are very pleased, all brown until last night when the first black girl arrived.

We also have a confession to make, bad herd management I'm afraid, all a bit embarrassing but very cute nonetheless.
On Monday this week I went out to check on the portly ladies to see a female with a head hanging out. When I got closer I could see that it was Tabitha, our lovely dark brown Qjori maiden. The problem was that she had been mated to the awesome Jack of Spades in September and therefore wasn't due until August!
I immediately expected the worst. A premature cria who, at not even 9 months gestation, would be dead on arrival. However, a short while later out plopped a lively little male who was only showing slight signs of dismaturity. According to my records it was a gestation of 268 days. No, the general consensus and the text books suggested that it was not possible. But how could it have happened?

When Sue got home we discussed it at length and tried to work out who had been responsible. It remained a mystery until 5.45am the following morning when I was awoken by Sue declaring "It was Qjori".
During last summer we kept all the males in fields in the next village. They would have had to catch a bus to do the deed. But Qjori kept coming over to do some matings and spit offs. When he was visiting he stayed in a paddock next to the girls. Sue recalls finding him grazing in the girls paddock one day. That day must have been the day he carried out the filthy deed. So Qjori's daughter, Tabitha, has produced a son and a grandson for him. Line breeding or just plain incest?

And here he is, we have named him QT. As in 'on the QT (quiet)', it also stands for Qjori Twice.

Our other cria seem, after a tricky start for some, to be thriving. Here is the gorgeous Rio, she is full of beans. Her mother, Minstrel, is a Jack of Spades girl. In fact Minstrel was the first ever Jack of Spades girl, how about that!

The unnamed brown boy who spent the night in our bedroom is now doing very well and has been named Branson. He is perhaps a little too friendly but has worked hard on his mother's, initially unfruitful, udder so much so that we have now stopped bottle feeding him as she is now providing sufficient milk. He is a nibbler of trousers and a nipper of bottoms.

The only one still being bottle fed is little Pepper. Her mother, Poppy, is not really doing the job we want her to. Frequently wandering off, often in the middle of a feed, she seems oblivious to the fact that she has a cria. Pepper is feeding from her when she can but is not getting enough just yet. We are monitoring her intake and her weight gains very carefully and will reduce the bottle when we can. She'll get there, they are amazing little suckers these cria.

A perfect result from Fifi, finally, as she produced her first ever female cria! A beautiful little thing who we have called Bijou. Text book everything from the word go, just lovely, lovely, lovely.

Bijou, with her mothers ears, bless her and the Qjori greyish head. It usually fades to brown.

 

I have no pictures of the new black girl as yet, she is a whopper though and was up very quickly last night. She was born at 6.10pm following a quite lengthy assist. Her head was somehow twisted around one leg and upside down so I was up to my elbow for ten minutes sorting it all out. However, she took the longest first feed I have ever seen from a cria. She stood absolutely rock solid for 15 minutes, glugging away before she was even an hour old.

So the first batch are now done. All sired by Qjori. We now have a few days respite before the next dozen.

We have cria from four other herd sires to come so exciting times ahead!

Back on track.

Thanks for all the messages and good wishes over the past couple of days, I can report that we are back on track and the Mighty Patou machine is rumbling on!

An update on the little brown Qjori boy. After a night with us and a bit of TLC he is stronger and feeding from his mother. He is dis-mature though so we are watching him very carefully. He had a couple of doses of bovine colostrum, has been covered with long lasting antibiotics and we are topping him up with supplementary feeds for the time being. The glorious warm sunshine is helping and I am sure he will be OK. Two thirds of the naming committee (it is a big thing here) are at school and work respectfully. I am not permitted to name anyone without consulting said committee but I will have some strong suggestions at the end of the day.

So here is unnamed boy in his 'padded cell' in our bedroom.

 

And here is the little munchkin with his mother the following day.

Yesterday we moved into shearing mode, bit of a clue in the above picture. I heard Colin Ottery and his side-kick Seb arrive at 0750hrs as I was looking at the back end of a female, Rosa, from across the field as she looked to be acting a bit oddly. By the time I got to her a head and two feet had been pushed out and a short while later a large brown Qjori girl arrived! She was in a cush almost instantly, up within an hour and feeding within 2. She is now hard to catch and pops up in all corners of the 5 acre field, almost instantaneously. I think she may be some sort of shape shifter. She will also be named this evening.

 

Today I am on cria watch again as we still have seven females due this week and there are a lot of suspicious looking ladies out there. Minstrel makes a habit of giving birth on my birthday, today, and she was wandering about with her tail sticking out earlier.

The herd looks absolutely scrummy at the moment, newly shorn, suede to touch and of cartoon like, almost alien appearance, my favourite time of the year.

Here are the hooligan mobsters, last years boys, they follow me around the field like a team of pick-pockets waiting for an opportunity to half inch my wallet. When I turn round they all look around as if to say "Who? Us? No, not up to anything here". I am sure of they could whistle, they would.

 

The worst possible start.

Pretty crap start to the day today.
We are on high alert here as we move into the birthing window for 10 girls.
6am and Sue ran up the stairs announcing that Sabrina was giving birth.
I was straight out and sure enough a head and two front legs were out. Airway was clear and all appeared normal.
However, it soon became obvious that Sabrina was exhausted and was having trouble giving birth.
I delivered the cria but after 30 minutes of trying everything we just couldn't get her breathing and had to call it a day.
Sabrina, meanwhile, was flat out exhausted and had lost a fair amount of blood. Two hours later and she is much improved having had oxytocin (placenta now out, and normal), antibiotics and pain relief.

The cria was a big beautiful dark brown female and I have just laid her to rest in a lovely spot in the field. Tears are falling on the keyboard as I type, I know it is all part of breeding animals but it's hard to come to terms with.

Sabrina knew she was in need of help, she was lying right next to the gate that we always enter the field by.
I know that there was nothing else we could have done, we will be up earlier tomorrow.

Shearing tomorrow, I have a busy day ahead of me getting everything set up.

Knackered, as the real work begins!

It was 7pm last Saturday when I finally pulled up outside Patou HQ, weary, knackered, hungry and gasping for a drink. After four and a half days at the Royal Bath and West show I was home, ready to unload the show team and all their kit. The last show of the summer (well maybe just one more in August) was over and so was I, almost.
We had a good show, but it's always difficult for breeders coming from the dark side at the Bath and West as it is run as an age championship, rather than the more familiar and MUCH BETTER colour championship. It basically means that the black, brown and grey juniors are compared to all the other light coloured juniors and so on. That invariably means that the Supreme championship line up is made up of white, light and fawn alpacas, from my point of view that looks a bit dull to anyone watching. OK, so it may be argued that they are the best alpacas in the show and so deserve to be there, but for spectators and breeders of the darker alpacas it is all a bit..........boring. Oops.... did I just say that?

At this point I must point out that there was one exception in the line up this year.
Shining out like a beautiful ball of anthracite amongst a ring of dirty cotton wool, smoulderingly good looking and seemingly tearing a hole through the atmosphere from another darker world was a super Inca female. Black as the ace (or should that be Jack) of Spades, she stood alone amongst all the general assembled beigeness. All was not lost, we, the champions of the dark side were represented by the best of us all.

Actually I was also in the line up with a little white boy owned by Classical Mile End alpacas. He went on to win Best of British, very deservedly.
In that Supreme line up we stood next to the eventual Supreme Champion, a junior fawn female owned by Houghton Hall Alpacas, who was absolutely beautiful. Her fleece was simply gorgeous, like molten gold. A very worthy winner.

Right enough of that drivel. The highlight for team Patou was that we were represented in the ring by two young Patou warriors, Gus had been accompanied by his best mate, George Fry and both of them were up for a scrap. Having camped on site we were up early and breakfasted ready to do battle on Thursday, junior day. Unusually the Bath and West show not only runs as an age championship but also runs in reverse order. I have no idea why, but it does. That meant the whites were in first and we weren't in the ring until after lunch.

Just before lunch, however, was a small matter of the junior handler class. Gus and George were entered in a line up of five eager handlers, including, past master and hot favourite, Isla May, a very shrewd operator with a steely glint in her eye.

The boys couldn't match Isla and she took the trophy, Gus coming second and George a very creditable third. Top marks to Barbara for her judging in, undoubtedly, the toughest class of the show!

Lunch was taken as the boys prepared for the proper show classes and it wasn't long before they were doing battle in the junior grey class. First for Vickery with Gus and second for Wasimba and George, the Mighty Patou were up and running.

As usual it was a all over in a blur with Gus going in six consecutive classes, brown, black and grey, not just for us, he was in demand.

He took Wesley in the junior black male class and came second behind some old bloke from Somerset, who was a little too smug showing off his first placed rosette!

The nuts and bolts of it were that we ended up with colourful display of rosettes as the big boys Tsar and Talisker took first and second in the intermediate brown class on Friday.

I am now at home with plenty to do, we are shearing next Wednesday and we need some sunshine to dry the shearing field up or we won't be able to get any vehicles in, I mean, come on, it's June! Where's the bloody sunshine!
We also have females to watch, ten girls have now passed the eleven month stage and are lying around like a load of beached whales. No galavanting about from now on, we are firmly and properly on 'cria watch'.
I also have a a group of animals to get ready for export, but more on that when they have safely landed the other side of the channel.

So what am I doing sitting here in front of the computer I hear you all roar!
Enough said, now where are my wellies?