The Pinger pinged!

Two days ago I was on alpaca watch. In fact I have been on alpaca watch all week. As a result I am exhausted. Is it tiring this alpaca watching? Well, no not really but everything else is. Sue has been working all week. She leaves at 7.30am and gets home at 2.30pm. I have therefore switched my shifts round so that I start at 3pm. A nice relaxing time to start, plenty of time for a nice shower, a long lunch and time for chores galore. The downside is that starting at 3 I have to finish at midnight. So by the time I get home and get to bed it is 1am. Then it's up at 7 to get Gus some breakfast and continue with the 'watching'.

Now this may seem normal behaviour to some but I am a 10.30pm bed time boy. I'm always up early but rarely stay up later than that. So this 'watching' business means that come ten o'clock at night my brain is in shut-down mode and my eyes subconsciously are scanning my surroundings for a dark corner for me to curl up in. Sorry that may have given the impression that I am capable of curling up like a cat, obviously I am not cat like in any way. More like a bear I suppose, but not as flexible, I digress. 

So this watching business. Have I witnessed anything of note?

Abso-blooody-lutely I have!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The day before yesterday I saw Polly, who was at the far end of the field, with two tails. One of them was fawn like the rest of her the other was definitely not fawn, it was very dark, and it looked like a head. This was the moment I had been waiting for, the moment I had trained for, the moment that I sprang into action like a crack commando unit, I was a blur as I hurtled (please allow me a bit of poetic licence here) up the hill, birthing kit under my arm. I screeched to a halt a short distance away and quietly observed, glancing casually at my watch to make sure everything was proceeding at text book pace. My heart rate barely subsided as I fought to contain my excitement. A head and two feet became a head and two legs, a body, a slippery slide and a gentle thud as the newborn landed on planet Patou.

To cut a long story short ladies and gentlemen, drum roll followed by fanfare please.......

May I announce the arrival of Patou Tabitha! And yes, Tabitha is a girls name!

Tabitha, a beautiful dark chocolate brown and weighing in at a generous 9kg is absolutely perfect in every way and completely and utterly gorgeous! Not only that but she is exactly what I predicted! I am now officially classing myself as a savant and am available for predictions for a small fee.

Here she is with her mother Polly, now how about that for an injection of colour from Qjori!

Polly had a gorgeous Columbus girl last year, Patou Spirit, a real favourite here and already on the 'never to be sold list'. Spirit has been hanging around her mother and is only a spit distance away from her new sister at all times as can be seen in the photograph below.

I am 'on watch' again today as the final three are all over 340 days. The brown girls are on their way!

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.

The Three Amigos'

A day at home and some pictures of Taz (dark brown), Troy (light brown) and Tarquin (very light dark brown).

The pictures down't need many words. 

Taz, the youngest is now heavier than Troy and Talisker and is gaining 500g a day! he may be a rather large boy!

Troy with his perfect little head was grace and technique personified. A perfectionist I think.

The Mighty Quin didn't partake, or if he did I must have missed him, perhaps he was so quick that he was like a white flash, maybe I just don't see the light coloured ones? 

Finally, the bow taking final stand. That Tarquin isn't looking in the right direction again! 

Is there something wrong with the poor fellow, are all light ones a bit thick?

All about the boys

Up until this year we have never needed plasma, naively, perhaps foolishly, we have never kept a stock of it.


This is our seventh year of having cria born and this is the first year that we have had cause to require plasma. Luckily friends at Old Stour and Reddingvale Alpacas have helped us out by supplying us with their own plasma when we needed it.

So now is the time to get our own stock, and replace the plasma that we have used. 

Yesterday, the lovely Louise, our vet, bounded up with her arms full of the equipment required for the process. We had spoken at length about what was needed and how we would go about the process of extracting blood from our alpacas and tranforming that into life saving plasma. I had spoken to others with knowledge of this procedure and the general consensus was that it was pretty simple. Splendid, I told Louise and she arrived full of confidence, as was I.

We don't have a paddock full of castrated males, we have never had a problem selling our boys on when the time is right so we had to look at what we had available.

There wasn't a lot of choice. First up was the mighty Roger Resilient. Roger has grown into a lovely looking male and when he was relieved of his massive fleece we could see what a cracking looking male he had grown into. Here he is pictured yesterday afternoon, under his favourite tree.

Now I have never done this before nor seen it done. Louise, who is relatively young in experience had never done it either. She has been learning about alpacas over the past few years by dealing with the Patou herd for various things. So a good start, me, Louise nor Roger had never done this before. It started off ok, a vein was found and blood oozed into the collecting bag. About a quarter of a pint was collected when Roger decided it would be a good idea to leap about, a lot. After an unsuccessful retry we decided to leave Roger and move on.

Up stepped Rafiki, who had been nibbling his lead rein in the next pen. Once again a great start, a vein located and blood was forthcoming. Again after about a quarter of a pint some general leaping about took place and despite my best efforts he wouldn't stand still. Here is the big boy under his favourite tree (the same as Roger's).

So we moved on to the third and final boy, Herr Clumpernickle himself who was waiting patiently eyeing up the ladies. Clump was 'stabbed' by Louise and the blood flooded into the bag. Columbus just stood there and although we had to change bags for technical reasons good old Clumpy gave forth a very generous pint at least.

To cut a long story short, we discovered that you can't leave alpaca blood to separate like horses blood, it just doesn't split. Perhaps it would if you waited long enough but 4 hours in a cool box was long enough for me and the blood was whisked away to the Eqiuine hospital in Salisbury where it was successfully spun into some lovely clear plasma. It is now in the freezer where I hope it stays for the rest of the year. In fact hopefully it will stay there until it gets binned in a years time. It is however, comforting to know it is there.

We will be increasing stocks during the winter ready for next years birthing.

Qjori, who is the biggest strongest alpaca here was excused blood giving duties as he is rather busy making the future members of the Patou herd with the ladies. We already have 8 spitting off to him.

Here he is this morning with Poppy (mother of Thor, God of Thunder and Roger Resilient). In the foreground is Reeya awaiting her turn with her eyes all glazed over whilst her son, Talisker takes Qjori's lead. Talisker was making the most wonderful bee in a jamjar noise which you could just hear when Qjori took breath.

It's all happening here in Patouland!

My birthday present!

So my birthday has passed once again, and I am one year closer to retirement from the day job. 

Two years ago, we had a party on my birthday and at 7.15pm in front of a large gathered audience (a few of my old chums from London were here, they don't get to see much alpaca action) our black girl Bannock gave birth to Patou Rafiki. He was a big and strong Jack of Spades boy weighing in at 10.60kg. He looked a complete mess at birth, masses of fleece all over the place, and he appeared very fawn. Very fawn indeed.

Rafiki turned out, firstly, to be the biggest character in the herd and secondly come shearing time to be a very handsome boy indeed and a brown boy at that. He is a held in very high regard here in Patouland (and also in North Yorkshire!). He may not make the grade as a herdsire but as an alpaca he is a gem.

Yesterday, Minstrel, a Jack of Spades girl, gave birth to a cria. Once again a big strong cria weighing in at 10.38kg (I don't know where Minstrel kept it, she must have no internal organs!). Rafiki would be a hard act to follow.

However, I do believe that Minstrel and Qjori have followed on very well from two years ago.

May I introduce Patou Taz, named after Qjori's Tasmanian roots (Taz may be lengthened to Tasmanian something or other apparently, and Mrs S usually gets her way!)

As you can see Taz is an absolutely beautiful dark chocolatey brown, a really gorgeous colour.

Feeding within an hour and as seen in the picture below, still feeding well with a very milky face.

Now I suspect like most breeders there are some alpacas who's unveiling by the shearing blades is eagerly anticipated. This year we were waiting to see what Patou Skye would look like as looking at her fleece it was a bit hard to tell. Skye is the daughter of one of our Collabear girls and came to us as a weanling.

Here she is earlier in the year. She looked fawn from the outside but there were obvious signs of other colours when you looked closely.

Well here she is! She looks completely different! So what colour is that exactly? 

Any suggestions?

Oh and I suspect you may want to know what sex Taz is?


Well obviously he is a boy, we don't seem to be doing anything else this year!

A day to remember

Today is my birthday and so once Sue had left for work and Angus had gone to school I had the place to myself. I planned a day with the newly shorn Patou herd. Who knows maybe a cria would come on this prestigious date.

First though was the little sweaty task of 'mucking out'. Due to inclement weather during and after shearing we have had all sheds and marquees up and open for business. The problem is they can't even be bothered to step out into the field to do their pooping. There was quite a lot of it! Not only that but the place had obviously been hosed down with alpaca wee, the filthy minxes.

Anyway once that was all done and the fleece was sorted I had time to wander about the field gazing at the beautiful slender graceful creatures that had emerged from under all that fleece. It is my favourite time of the year. The girls have never looked more gorgeous.

I sat down and was soon surrounded as mothers seemingly brought their babies over for me to admire. Here  is Reeya with little Talisker, Sahara also joined the group.

Then Poppy came over, (left bum) with Priscilla (grandmother and right bum, ooh that doesn't sound right, I mean her bum is on the right) and in the foreground, Poppy's boy Thor (God of Thunder).

Whilst I was out there, Minstrel, our lovely black Jack of Spades girl (she does have a white chinny chin chin) appeared to be readying herself for something. At 345 days she was bang on time. I nipped out for half an hour and upon my return................yes, she had just popped one out!

Further details of the latest addition to the Mighty Patou herd tomorrow!

Sailing under full canvas

Over the past week I have become obsessed with the weather forecast. Absolutely obsessed.

I have been making checks virtually every hour on the BBC website, the Met Office site, a local weather website and any other weather prediction source I can find. I have been studying cows to see how long they have been lying down I have been asking local farmers (they seem to know) what they think. No stone has remained unturned to ensure that I have been fully briefed as to what weather to expect. They all said the same. It was going to rain all day on Sunday the 10th of June and Sunday the 10th of June was the day the shearers were coming. Bloody marvellous.

Still, the day before was predicted to be dry and sunny so I knew that  if we could get the herd dry we would be in with a chance. Our marquee (4m x 8m) was up next to the shed and we hoisted every gazebo that we had to bolster cover. The Mighty Patou Ship was sailing under full canvas, we had nothing left to hoist.

The herd went under cover on Saturday evening, and when I say under cover I mean they all went into a shelter of some sort they didn't all wander about in dodgy macs speaking in even dodgier accents whilst reading upside down newspapers.

We went to bed on Saturday night and waited to see what would happen the following day. 

Mike Banks and his team arrived shortly after noon and we were ready and waiting. A superb army of helpers we here and keen to get proceedings under way. 

Ladies and gentlemen it was like a well oiled machine. Prior to starting jobs were dished out. Every member of the Patou Army knew what was expected. Sleeves were metaphorically rolled up and, not afraid to get dirty, the army readied itself for action.

Sue and I had decided beforehand that I would oversee the animal side of things (a bit like the fat controller) and she would supervise the fleece side of things. Hamish Davidson was drafted into the alpaca handler team, Luke and Emily were dealing with the alpacas whilst they were down and collecting the blanket fleece. Richard and Di were absolute wizards with the brooms clearing and bagging the remainder of the fleece.  My dad was chief scribe ensuring all fleeces were correctly labelled and Mum assisted Sue in providing coffee initially, then lunch for all. Sausages and tomato soup, it was one of those days.

The rain just about held off and all alpacas were sheared dry meaning all fleeces were bagged dry. 

A massive thank you to all who helped, it was a great bit of teamwork and it made the whole process a pleasure.

Now, a short ranty bit. When a camera was produced one of the shearing team asked that no pictures were taken due to possible complaints from the RSPCA. I'm afraid my blood temperature raised slightly for two reasons. Firstly the pictures were only going to be used privately by the two new alpaca owners who were helping out (some of our boys came back for shearing). Secondly, if the RSPCA thing was true, what the hell do they know about alpacas!! The fleeces had to come off, each alpaca was treated with great care, they were probably restrained for less than 5 minutes each and seconds after release were grazing as if nothing had happened. Not only that but they looked much happier without their fleeces on!

So here are some pictures that I took and if anyone wants to complain I am ready to argue all day long!