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?

Devon County Show time!

The Devon County Showground has been my home for most of this week as I travelled west on Wednesday afternoon with the Mighty Patou Show team. I was once again 'flying solo' as Sue and Gus stayed at home.

Devon is a cracking show, the alpaca marquees are on top of  a hill looking down on the rest of the show (how appropriate) and there is a lovely grassy area at the back where the happy campers stay on our illegal campsite. Having looked at the weather forecast I had chosen the 'tent within a tent' method of staying dry and with both tents being of the pop up variety I was very quickly set up and welcoming visitors for beer and sausages!

Thursday was our day, all the coloured alpacas were to be shown, leaving the other sort, you know, the see through ones, for Friday. This meant that there would be a flurry of activity as we had consecutive classes. I teamed up with Simon from Moonsbrook who was also flying solo and as I introduced him to coloured Huacayas on Thursday he let me into the see-through Suri world on Friday.

First up for us was little Patou Viking, on his show debut in the junior black male class. Sue and I had realised when loading up that we had forgotten to halter train Viking so it was going to be interesting! We had a few drag sessions and I thought the little fellow was going to fight me all the way but come show time, he pushed out his chest, held his head high and walked into the ring as if he did it every day. The National champion and his stable companion (4th place at the National) were in the ring so I was aiming high! I was absolutely delighted when Viking came third, a very decent effort!

We then went into the next class with our two little grey superstars, Patou Vickery and Patou Wasimba. 

I was very pleased when we took 1st and 2nd place! What a start to the day! 

However, next was the moment I had been waiting for, it was brown boy time. We had Warrior in the juniors and then Talisker and Tsar in the intermediate class. They looked great in the Devon sunshine, proper colour, proper alpacas. I was starting to feel very proud of our team and with Tsar time coming up I was in danger of getting emotional. For those of you who don't know me very well, I may look like an ageing nightclub bouncer but I am a big softie at heart. 

The brown junior male class was the biggest class of the day and Warrior came home in creditable fourth place. Warrior is a smelly little sausage, over-fleeced and stinky, he needs shearing!

Warrior, Talisker and Tsar, waiting to do battle.

So, intermediate male time. Tsar time. Emotion time. Tsar was looking great, the sun shone and his fleece was absolutely gleaming. He came first, I just managed to hold back the tears but couldn't speak. When the judge, Liz Barlow, gave me the rosette I think I sort of squeaked at her. Thank you for the photograph Joy!

Talisker picked up the third place rosette and we were done for the day. Everyone had won something and I was very happy. The colour championships would be held on Saturday morning and Tsar, Vickery and Wasimba would be battling it out on behalf of team Patou.

The team relax after a hard days work and I pose for the camera with the days winnings. (Thanks again Joy)

 

Friday, I was honoured to be in and out of the ring with see-through Suris as Moonsbrook had a string of great results. Opposite end of the alpaca spectrum for me but they are intriguing beasts those Suris. Strong, feisty and a little bit mad, but beautiful when they are in full flow, but no, we won't be wavering from the fluffy path of darkness.

Late on Friday we were told that the main show was cancelled on Saturday, torrential rain overnight, every night, meant the car parks were mud baths and people simply couldn't get on to the show ground. It is the first time in 119 years that they have had to cancel a days showing. Splendidly the alpaca showing and the colour championships would carry on regardless. Less silly questions to answer at the pens and a concentration of breeders without distractions.

Vickery was in first and was awarded Reserve Champion Grey Male behind Di Davies' big boy. What a start to the day, again.

It was then brown time and Tsar was also awarded Reserve Champion brown male behind a Classical Mile End junior with a stunningly dense fleece. No complaints there and emotions under control.

Tsar, exhausted by his exploits spent the rest of the day fast asleep.

Overall a hugely successful and enjoyable show for us. I now have two days at home before setting off with the Mighty Patou Show team to the Royal Bath and West Show. This time I will be accompanied by Gus and his best mate George so I will once again be relegated to my role of Patou photographer and cooker of sausage. Happy days.

The road to nowhere.

Last weekend I thought it would be nice to load up the show team, drive to the wonderful M25, breakdown, become scared for the lives of the show team, limp to Cobham services and have a picnic, then ask someone else to tow us all home. I had seven hours to kill, the sun was shining, so why not?

Of course that was never the plan, but that is what happened. We had selected a mighty show team of seven to take to the South of England Show in West Sussex. It was a show that we had never been to and flying solo once more, I had the tent, the barbecue and the coolbox on board as well as the rest of the show paraphenalia. Luckily I had also strapped 8 hurdles to the side of the trailer, a premonition perhaps?

So to the details, a relaxed load up and departure and a gentle drive in the sunshine heading east. As I coasted along in heavy traffic between junction ten and nine I was suddenly aware that I was slowing down, a dab on the accelerator proved fruitless as I continued to slow down. I looked at the temperature gauge which showed the needle at the top of the red. I immediately pulled over onto the hard shoulder. Popping the bonnet I was engulfed in steam accompanied by a very loud hissing noise.
I immediately became aware that the one place I didn't want to be was on the hard shoulder of the busy M25 with a trailer of very precious, in all senses of the word, alpacas. Images of some moron ploughing into the back of the trailer caused me to move and think with seemingly superhuman speed. I chucked 2 litres of mineral water into the system and luckily the engine started, it was a mile to Cobham services and we made it by the skin of our teeth before the engine management system shut the system down again. A large sigh of relief all round. Jeepers creepers that was a scary place to be.

When I passed my driving test 31 years ago my parents bought me a years membership of the AA and I have been covered ever since, it was a day like this that made it all worthwhile. Not only that but it had been recommended to me a year or so ago that I take out a policy with Equestrian Rescue Services to cover the trailer and more importantly the alpacas. The AA will not recover trailers under their policies, a lot of people don't know that.

So, the AA were finally mobilised and on their way. I have to say the AA patrol people are fantastic but the call centre is a very frustrating place to communicate with, there may have been some shouting as they changed the arrangements for my recovery three times. Ooops.

To cut a long story short, the Discovery (I hadn't realised how filthy it was!) was taken home by the AA whilst I waited for ERS (who were absolutely brilliant by the way, in every respect) to arrive. Whilst waiting for the AA I had deployed the hurdles and the team had a munch on some lovely grass on the roadside. That slowed the traffic down I can tell you!

I have to tell you about one of the recovery wagon drivers ( I had three altogether due to 'call centre confusion'). The AA called out a local garage to try and fix me and get me back on the road. A gentleman, I think called Chris, turned up with a big tow truck and having seen the huge 4 inch gash in the top hose stated that I would need recovering. I hadn't mobilised ERS at this point as I really wanted to get patched up and continue onwards to the show. I pointed out that I would need to get ERS out for the trailer but Chris would have non of it, if he could, he would take us all home. He was an interesting character and about as far from 'jobsworth' as possible. Ex Royal Navy, ex dolphin and killer whale trainer and heavy duty biker he did everything in his power to make it so. Sadly, he didn't have the right kit to hitch up the trailer and had to admit defeat. There should be more people out there like him, the world would be a better place!

The situation now is that the trailer and the car are outside, I can move neither, the alpacas are grazing happily and I am looking at a bill anywhere between small and huge. I should have been sitting covered in rosettes and ribbons by the way! The car is being collected tomorrow and will be pressure tested to see if the head gasket has blown. Luckily the next show is Devon County so I have a little time to get sorted out.

All in a days 'work!'