Goodbye 2013!

I have finally managed to drag myself from beneath the great cricket fuelled depression that has been forcing me to overindulge in the Christmas cheer for slightly too long. Of the left-overs all that remains is some cheese and a bag of prawns. No doubt we will polish that off later.
So it comes to the time to cast an eye back over the last 12 months and see where it leaves us going into 2014. A small review is in order if that's ok with you? No? Tough, here it comes.

January and we were still struggling (but winning) to get Tsar back on his feet. The weather had been awful and hadn't helped, in fact I am sure it was a contributory factor in his decline. However, January was the month that we felt the corner was turned and so it proved to be, he is now thriving and appears to be the only one of the ten males that we had in 2012 to keep his testiculars. Castrations will be organised in the next week or two for his three contemporaries from last year and a couple of the older boys, Woody and Rafiki.

Tsar, before illness struck him.

Tsar this summer, looking a picture of health!

April saw the arrival of Patou Una, the first cria of the year, and another drama. Found early in the morning on a cold wet day lifeless and close to death. She was first introduced to a bath, a blow dry and an electric blanket. That did the trick and she was soon thriving.

 

We enjoyed a busy show season which as usual kicked off with a trip to the NEC and the Futurity. We weren't hugely successful but did take the female fawn championship, albeit with someone else's alpaca. It was still Sue in the ring, and if anyone asked who the gorgeous fawn belonged to we were open and honest, we couldn't have been accused of shouting that information from the rooftops though! It was a hugely enjoyable weekend and always great to catch up with friends.

We did however enjoy some success in later shows and enjoyed all of them, win lose or draw!

 Patou Talisker, son of Van Diemen Qjori of Patou, a brown male champion.

A much more successful breeding season was soon upon us and we ended up with eleven female additions to the herd in a variety of colours, all of which were one shade of brown or another. Although I have been accused of declaring rather too many shades of brown I do maintain that I am right. It is just that my brown spectrum is a bit wider than anyone else's!

 My favourite cria from this year Patou Vanilla. A brown alpaca in anyone's eyes!

A beautiful summer saw everyone doing well and there was even time to add to the herd further as four pregnant females arrived in late summer. Three black and one brown and all pregnant to Popham Thunder of Inca. We were ready for some female cria with some new genetics for the herd. Unluckily for us four males hit the deck, the best of the bunch just happens to be brown though, properly brown too! 

Matings were underway and 2014 will see cria arriving from five different herdsires as we expand the genetics in the Mighty Patou herd. Exciting times ahead. We start in June this year, with a September finish, all being well!

The major story of the year for me was my retirement after 25 years with the Wiltshire Constabulary (I know it's not called a Constabulary anymore but to me it always was one). Bugger what the desk jockeys think.

So I am now free to throw myself fully into the alpacas business. This has meant that everyone now gets fed in the daylight, injections and other treatments are up to date and you could eat your lunch off the floor of the field shelters, I wouldn't, but you could if you wanted to, and you don't mind alpaca shit on your sandwiches!

So to 2014. We must move on, we must move forward, we must sell some females. We will be at several shows the National being the first. The show team is taking shape and may be the biggest show team that we have ever taken on the road, I'm not talking double figures here, we only have one small trailer, after all you don't have to be big to be mighty!

So all that remains is for me to say Happy New year to you all, we hope that 2014 is an absolute cracker!

The darling of the herd.

On the fourth of August this year a little brown female was born here in Patouland. She weighed in at 6.65kg and was very dainty indeed. She was exactly the right colour and she was a she. She was the cria that I had been waiting for. We named her Vanilla.

Those of you familiar with the story of Tsar from last year know how much we laboured to get him right after a pretty poor beginning (he is now in great form by the way). You will also be aware of the fact that I declared him last summer as 'the best cria we have ever produced', a statement I still stand by as it was then. Well as we were so pleased with Tsar we repeated that mating. His mother, an ATA Cambridge Centurion girl, Patou Amelie (daughter of Patou Lily) was put back to our Aussie boy, Qjori and Vanilla was the result. A daintier version of Tsar but otherwise exactly the same. Great colour, great fleece qualities, beautiful.

Unfortunately Vanilla also had problems as a young cria, she gained weight initially but after two weeks she suddenly started losing weight and we had to step in. We started supplementing her feeding with a bottle and watched her very closely. It became apparent that she was only suckling from one teat. She would nudge the others but only the front left teat got used properly. There was no sign of mastitis but we treated Millie for it anyway, twice, to no avail. We continued to bottle feed, always a struggle as Vanilla never really gave in to us and at the end of September we stopped bottle feeding.

Acting on the gingery wise words of the Lord Chief Justice of Inca we put Millie and Vanilla in the shed and introduced Foal Creep pellets to Vanilla. A slightly complex arrangement with the feed buckets ensured that Vanilla could get them but Millie couldn't. Vanilla weighed in at 8.51kg. A month later and she had put on 3kg!

We have dealt with diarrhoea, pneumonia, listlessness and sudden weight losses since then but I think we have now turned a corner. Amelie and Vanilla now spend the days out in the paddock with the others and come in at night where they have plenty of feed. Vanilla is now off the foal creep pellets and eating regular alpaca feed, she is nudging 16kg and is a bundle of energy. She is a midget of course but she is, very definitely, the darling of the herd.

A sunny day but the 'phantom' still struck!

It was a beautiful sunny Autumn day yesterday so I headed out with the camera to take some photographs of the mighty Patou herd. Now I don't profess to be much of a photographer, I am always guilty of not 'seeing' what is behind the subject of the photograph, hence there is usually a certain amount of over-cropping before the finished article is ready for publication.
Yesterday was no different. Yesterday I was the victim of the phantom pooper.

For instance here is a picture of Skye and her cria Willoughby. In the top left corner the phantom perches in that familiar stance, the 'delivery' stance. At the time I hadn't noticed the phantom's presence.

 

Even when I moved location slightly to make better use of the sun I failed to see what was going on behind as the phantom had now been joined by a colleague, a 'double-header' was now taking place, could it have been deliberate?

 

Again I moved, still unaware, but it was no good the phantom and her colleague were still there. In fact a tail much closer had just been raised, luckily for a different reason.

Slowly, the phantom, having relieved herself then revealed herself and came down to say hello, it was Patou Whisper, daughter of Lily, my favourite alpaca in the whole wide world.

As she is totally beautiful I thought that I would photograph her, this time I could see what was occurring behind her as the scene unfolded, the perfect almost choreographed comeuppance for the phantom!

After that I was a bit more careful so here are some 'phantomless' pictures on a sunny day in Wiltshire.
Whisper was joined by her young apprentice, Wasimba, almost a grey but I am struggling to find any black fibre, plenty of brown and white but no black, yet.

Next, Vickery, a real proper, genuine, bonafide grey! He is the noisiest cria we have ever had, every time I touch him (and he doesn't seem to mind) he goes into a series of clicking, clucking, humming, chirping noises. I am hoping his fleece stays as it is, a bright shiney polished steel colour with a lovely tight crimp and as you can see he has plenty of it!

 

 Willoughby, a rich deep brown colour.

 

Wagtail, despite looking quite light on the outside she is a much darker, richer brown on the 'inside'.

And finally, regular readers may remember the drama we had back in April when Sue found a virtually dead newborn cria in the field early one cold morning. She was rushed into the house, went into a warm bath, was blown dry with Sue's hair dryer and then became the first alpaca to go into our bed, on the electric blanket under our duvet.  Here she is pictured on that morning, rising from the dead as her body reached it's optimum temperature.

Una has thrived since then despite having to have been bottle fed and although now fully weaned she still sticks close to her mother at all times. She is, as you can see a big bundle of fluff.

What a show!

Last weekend we headed off for the South West Alpaca Group annual show, this year held in the Autumn.
I set off for The Hand Equestrian centre on Friday morning to meet up with a small but dedicated team of SWAG members, lead by the extreme organiser Di Davies, to set up what was a very impressive and professional looking show.

The rest of the Mighty Patou arrived that evening dazed and exhausted after I had taken the only sat nav. Diversions, Carnivals, roadworks and a complete lack of knowing where they were had delayed their arrival so I opened the wine and started without them, well the show must go on!

Saturday morning and after a bit of warming up wrestling we were ready for action. 170 alpacas had arrived  by the start and the Patou show team of 6 were pumped and ready to take on all-comers.

This was to be a show with two firsts for us, it was my first show where my primary occupation is as an alpaca breeder and it was to be the first time the three of us were in the ring together as a team.
The Patou pen was adorned with a gift from the Queen of the Mighty Inca Tribe and we were looking forward to the long day ahead of us. Isn't she clever!

Lunchtime and the junior handler class was held. Gus took Todd in and despite appearances in the below picture, worked hard to go through the motions of showing off his skill set. 

He went on to bamboozle the judge, Val Fullerlove, with his Jedi mind tricks and once under his spell the result was a forgone conclusion. She was putty in his little sweaty 10 year old hands.

We were up and running, first place, a nice halter and lead set and a Champion Handler sash. 

Gus and Todd milked it a bit as the onlooking crowd gathered mementoes having witnessed an impressive display of mind control.

Later in the afternoon, our big Team moment arrived, the intermediate brown male class. Three Patou warriors, three brown boys eager to impress. We were ready in plenty of time and Gus and Sue took it in turns to keep the team seat warm. I couldn't join in, I had reached the point of no return. If my legs had gone beyond the 90 degree point and I had taken a seat there is every likelihood that I wouldn't have been able to get up again!

It was a big class with 12 entrants and the judge, Liz Barlow, commented on the high quality of the animals on show. After much deliberation one by one we were brought to the front row and took 1st, 4th and 6th places. A very satisfying result for brown alpaca breeders!

Not only that but the first place male went on to take Champion brown male! I know that those of you 'in the know' will know why no names are mentioned. Suffice it to say that the Mighty Patou showed three brown males and were triumphant! I am, as shown below, far too embarrassed to wallow in the glory of the whole thing so I did the championship with my eyes tightly closed.

So 6 alpacas, 6 rosettes and two Championship sashes, a nice little return for us. It was a fabulous show all round and although there were things that could have been done differently it is difficult without the benefit of hindsight to get things perfect all the time.  We enjoyed it immensely and can't wait until the next show, The National!

The dark side grows stronger!

Yesterday saw the arrival in Patouland of three, year old, brown females. They have settled in well and have already laid three eggs (presumably one each). Not alpacas of course but hens!

There is a free range egg farm near us and sadly after the chickens are 60 weeks old they are deemed to be insufficiently productive so they go off to meet their maker whilst a new batch of young layers arrive.

The egg farmer is very keen to rehome as many as he can so we took three home, we would have loved more but at the moment we can't take more than three. The naming ceremony has sort of taken place and at the moment we have named one each. So here are Clementine, Laura and Lambo, (please note the liberal use of baling twine used to repair the Eglu run. I am working on plans for a large run but for the time being they are confined to barracks. I suspect it is a bit of a culture shock for them coming from a flock of 38,000 down to 3! 

A couple of weeks ago we did welcome some new alpacas which I hinted about a few months ago. 

I shook on a deal back in early July to buy four females. Three black and one dark brown. They were all pregnant to Popham Thunder and I was keen to get some of his genetics into the herd. Once the deal was done we waited for news of their cria, some lovely black and brown females to take the herd forward would be nice. 

However, one by one news came of the arrival of a male cria, three black and one brown. Not a female in sight, can you believe it! Still all is not lost, all four have been remated to Thunder and all are spitting off nicely. Next year four lovely females please!

I must say Thunder does do a good job, they are all nice but two of them are very promising.

This is Samantha, she is a little bit of a munter (slightly odd shaped head) but has produced the best of the four cria a very nice brown male called Warrior (no pressure then little man!).

 

And here is little Warrior, a lovely brown colour, great head and a very nice fleece indeed.

  

Now the other three are a bit more of a challenge for me. Because it has pretty much rained constantly since they arrived and because the first week they spent in a huddle miles away from everyone else I haven't quite got who is who sorted out. So here are some pictures of the other arrivals.

 This one is............ a black female, with a black male cria.

 

This is another black female with a black male cria.

 

Here is the final new girl, as you can see, a black female.

 

Here is her cria,............................................. possibly.

Or it could be this one. 

I will be getting to know them all very well from now on as I have hung up my truncheon for the very last time. I am now, officially, a farmer!

Where have I been!

Crikey, I have just looked and it is over 2 weeks since I last drivelled out a post on this blog, which is supposed to tell the tale of the Mighty Patou Tribe.Not much of a tale of late!
I have been in a complete and utter brain fizz. As I mentioned at the end of the last blog post I am retiring from the day job. This has caused quite an effect on my ability to function at anything other than 'a frantic, not achieving very much whilst expending a lot of energy type way'.

I suppose 25 years of pulling on a uniform, going to work at all times of the day and night, dealing with the worst the world has to offer, seeing strange things, horrific things, weird things, amusing things, incredulous things but mainly stupid things daily has kind of programmed me to wake up expecting to immerse myself back into that world. I can't quite believe that it is soon to be over.
I won't miss much of it I can tell you. I will miss the people that I viewed all of that with and I will miss the fun times I have had along the way, of which there have been many, but dealing with the sort of people that we tend to have to deal with regularly, no, I will not miss that at all.
Anyway at the time of writing I have seven 9 hour shifts left. Although I don't expect I will be doing much on the last one as I will have handed in my handcuffs, pepper spray, baton and the rest of the kit.

So, in two weeks, officially, when asked what my occupation is I will be able to answer 'Alpaca Breeder!'. That puts the pressure on a bit!
I will also be concentrating on another line of possible income but I won't bore you with the details of that.

So, the future, the Mighty herd now numbers 62 in total and we have 24 cria due next summer from five different stud males and that I find extremely exciting! In fact just writing that is making me feel like stripping off and galloping round the paddocks in the rain shouting complete and utter nonsense!

Perhaps I'll just have a wee dram and calm down a bit.

All that is left is to tell you all about the exciting and prestigious show that is coming up next month!

Closing date for entries is the 23rd of October so get on it NOW!! It is going to be great!

Time to reflect.

And so as another breeding season reaches the end it is perhaps time to reflect on what 2013 has to say about life in Patouland.

Cria count, 20 born here this year, 5 black females, 4 brown females, 2 multi females, 3 brown males, 2 black males, 2 grey males, 1 fawn male and Wilbur, the silver surfer.

I haven't got pictures of them all but here are some of the new kids on the block:

Firstly the four older black girls, all sired by Qjori.

Patou Ulani, mother Bobby, a fawn Mateus girl, head of the herd, bossy, spitty, kicky, we hope Ulani doesn't follow in her mothers footsteps!

Patou Umbria, mother Patou Penny a Witness girl, as bossy, kicky and spitty as her mother Bobby. We hope Umbria doesn't take after her mother or her grandmother............. but she probably will.

 Patou Violet, mother Minstrel, a black Jack of Spades girl. Violet is looking very promising.

Patou Willow, mother Sabrina, another black Jack of Spades girl, the pick of the black girls. Here is a fleece shot we took this morning. As usual the picture does not do it justice, it is lovely.

And now onto some of the boys, the browns.

Patou Will.i.am, mother the delectable fawn FiFi. Will has a gorgeous fleece and if we were picking a show team today he'd be the first name on the team sheet.

This is Patou Umberto, mother Poppy a brown Centurion girl. Sadly you might be able to see the white spot on his little chinny chin chin, his fleece is gorgeous.

Finally for today the only fawn in this years drop, Whisky Mac, out of Reeya our brown Jack of Spades girl. He is definitely one to watch.

 

And that is your lot for today, in other news, Sue and I came to a massive decision last weekend and that is that I am to retire from the day job at the end of October! That is fantastic news for me!!!

Now where are my pipe, slippers and satin smoking jacket?