Dry land for the boys!

We had a relatively dry couple of days this weekend so decided that we would finally be able to start weaning! This is the latest in the year that we have ever weaned and it is purely down to the weather. The land is so wet and boggy that we haven't been able to get the trailer near the gate and halter training has just been out of the question.
However, with a drying wind and some warm sunshine we took the opportunity to get all thirteen male cria weaned. Usually we leave the cria where they are and move the mums, but this year, again due to the weather, we have done it the other way round. So all the boys were rounded up and carried across the swampy mud to the trailer. First I had to clear the trailer of a few bales of hay, one of which was immediately claimed by the chickens!

Five minutes down the road and all the boys were all released into the dry land that we rent in the next village. Qjori and Tsar had been selected to stay as company and guardians for the gaggle of youngsters whilst the rest of the big boys were moved one field along. Qjori was immediately swamped as the boys gathered around him as if he was some sort of superstar (well he is a bit, to us at least). Tsar was very interested in the new arrivals and tried 'riding' several immediately. He was then pursued by Wilbur, our biggest weanling, who obviously thought that Tsar looked like his mother. Every time Tsar stopped running Wilbur stuck his head under looking for milk, all very odd indeed!

The boys assess their new surroundings in the sunshine, dry land at last!

Halter training will start tomorrow, definitely!

Next we need to move the eleven female weanlings away from their mothers, heavy and persistent rain today has put that back but we are now on the case!

Crash, bang, wallop!

Rain, wind, storms, hurricane winds, snow, sleet, hail, I am not going to go into what is going on down here as it is well documented and I know that we are hugely better off than a lot of people so I just thought I would indulge myself by giving you a Patou update.

As the blog title suggests we have had a crash, bang, wallop week. Actually we haven't had the wallop yet but titling this entry 'Crash, bang!', without the wallop didn't sound right.

The bang occurred as I sat in the kitchen having lunch a few days ago. There was a loud bang outside. When I say bang, it was a properly loud explosion. I immediately feared we were under attack. Milliseconds later I found myself in full combat mode, large carving knife in my teeth, loaded shotgun in my hands, bloodied bandana around my head and I appeared to be standing in a sort of kung-fu state of readiness. After waiting a few seconds with every sense heightened as far as it would go in an attempt to locate where the threat was coming from, I, for some unknown reason, threw myself into a forward roll, crashed into the cooker and hurt my head. That wasn't the 'crash' element of the title though!
Anyway, having gathered myself from the crumpled heap that I had become I waited alert for as long as I could, (cramp set in quite quickly) and established that the threat was outside. I relaxed my position, removed the carving knife from my now very dribbly mouth and hurled myself through the back door. A further forward roll and I was poised like Bruce Lee under the garden table. Again a full sensory scan of the immediate vicinity failed to reveal anything more menacing than the chickens who had stopped pecking and scratching around to stare at me.

Further investigation of the exterior of the house alerted me to the fact that my Discovery was listing hard to starboard as if she had been shot. A hissing noise was coming from her rear end as the left rear slowly lowered itself to the level of the 'wounded' side.

At this point I should inform you that my report of the event may have contained some slight exaggeration of the facts.

What had happened was that one of the rear suspension air-bags had, for some unknown reason, exploded. I have therefore been off the road for a few days and have now replaced the air-bags with a nice pair of unexplodable springs.

So now to the crash. Two days ago in the last hurricane force winds a huge conifer came down taking out a fence-line in one of the alpaca paddocks. Luckily no alpacas were under it and we have now closed off that paddock (it is like a bog anyway).

Angus surveys the damage, well he was until I asked him to smile at the camera!

 

As you can see, it's a big tree! 

So, another 24 hours of gale force winds and heavy rain to come today, I hope the 'wallop' doesn't arrive!
And another day goes by without any halter training. We will start soon, we have to!

Switching seamlessly to Plan B.

Having slipped and slid and fallen and skidded and generally behaved like a rather fat and ungainly Bambi on the mud greased slopes of our fields we decided to switch to plan B last weekend.

I decided that we needed to check the herd properly on a flat, dry, non-slip surface so we set up a pen on the driveway which is flat, dry and covered in non-slip gravel. The operation was a great success as the alpacas loved coming out of the field and running down the road through the village. All went ridiculously according to the plan which was fantastic.

I had also decided to treat the whole herd against coccidia and worms. This is not something that we normally do at this time of the year, the whole herd had been treated against Coccidiosis in September and wormed and treated against Liver Fluke in November. However, as it has been such a mild and wet winter we needed to tweak the usual regime. Due to the weather, half of the land is waterlogged so grazing areas are tight this year and poop picking has been impossible. Not only that but we have had a couple of females showing signs of abdominal discomfort so to be on the safe side it was decided to treat everyone. Everyone was also due for AD&E and some toenails needed cutting, again as it has been so wet toenails weren't getting worn down. Basically they were getting the whole works, a complete spa day for all!

The female and cria herd is split into two, with 25 on one side of the road and 28 on the other, so to keep it simple and with a dry and sunny weekend predicted we decided to do one side on Saturday (there was rugby to watch remember so outdoor time was restricted) and the other on Sunday. The herd is led by Millie and Vanilla, on the charge, Sue is operating the camera and controlling the rope across the road (multi-tasking) guiding them into the newly constructed 'dry-pen'.

I was wearing my red hat in honour of a Welsh victory on Saturday and bringing up the rear with Gus and his friend Dennis.

Sahara and her brother Vickery needed a little cajoling to join the rest of the herd.

With the herd in the pen we could get on with the job in hand in a fairly relaxed manner. I was even confident enough to promise Sue that I wouldn't throw a tantrum. Two hours later and they were done and I just about kept my promise, restricting myself to just a few swear words, I think.

We used our newly purchased and cheap wooden sheep hurdles to pen them in. I think they will look nice at church fêtes and village shows later in the year.

As it was a virtually rain free day the previous day the alpacas were dry which made things so much nicer for all concerned. Here is Polly and her daughter Waikiki waiting for the return trip up the road.

This is little Wesley, a Popham Thunder son, absolutely cracking fleece but a white spot on his chinny chin chin means he misses out on getting a spot in this years show team.

So there we have it, an action packed weekend in Patouland and as it went so well we will carry out all future husbandry on the driveway. Pats on the backs all round, aren't we clever.

Mud, mud and more mud.

Looking on the bright side, and that is all I can do at the moment, every day spent wallowing around in the mud is one day closer to the end of this atrocious weather. At least we are not as bad as some, Somerset, not far to the west of us, is actually under water, the whole county! 

We have some very wet bits and a lot of very muddy bits. The lucky ones in our herd are the males.

Qjori and his merry men live in the next village and although part of their field is under water, most of it is dry.

You may remember that we installed a temporary shelter (actually it is a portable garage) for them as they don't have much shelter from the wind and rain. It was a bit bright so I put a camouflage tarpaulin over it, now you can barely see it. It is in the below photograph somewhere (in real life it does look less blue!)

The boys love it and at the slightest sign of bad weather they wander in and don't come out until it's brightened up.

Meanwhile back in the home fields it is a different story. very wet and muddy everywhere. Here is a picture of three of last years cria, Vickery, Wasimba and Wagtail. All looking lovely and brown. The problem is that Vickery and Wasimba aren't brown at all, they are grey!

Storm damage here too, a fence down, how hard does the wind have to blow to blow a fence down?

However, time moves on and that means weaning. Hopefully by the end of the week eighteen cria will become 'weaners' as I tear them away from their mothers. Where I am going to put them all I haven't quite figured out but where ever they are it will be muddy!

Not an alpaca in sight.

Although the rain seems to have stopped temporarily the mighty Patou herd still appears bedraggled and caked in mud. How we are going to halter train them or get them into show ring condition is anyone's guess, I have no idea. So with no alpaca photographs I feel the need to report on a recent Patou family outing. It wasn't just any outing though, no, it was to celebrate an eleventh birthday. Angus was eleven on the eleventh of January.

So, we decided that we would remove ourselves from the mud for a weekend and head to the opposite end of the spectrum, we went to London. We followed Inca advice and stayed at an absolutely fantastic hotel opposite the Houses of Parliament, I can thoroughly recommend the Park Plaza Westminster Bridge Hotel, absolutely perfect.

If that wasn't enough the day after we arrived the sun came out!

We had a weekend of exploring to do but just to be topical I decided that Gus and I would take a 'selfie', it is harder than you think with a phone. Especially a relatively new phone that is 90% beyond me.

The first attempt was disappointing to say the least, come on boys concentrate! Someone referred to the following picture as 'The great Muppet caper', not sure why!

 

 Second try and at least someone is smiling.

The third and final attempt (we are easily bored and even more easily distracted) was the best we could do, Big Ben was supposed to be in the shot but it must have moved as I pressed the button.

Anyway that was enough larking about we had to switch on and prevent ourselves from being mugged, murdered or worse.
I like London, don't get me wrong, it is a great place to visit and in my opinion it is the greatest city on the planet but there are still more criminals and rip-off merchants in London than there are in Wiltshire, so I was on full alert for the duration, ready to spring into action, ready to rain lusty blows down on anyone perceived to be a threat to the three of us.
Actually we picked a useless week to go. Two of the things that Gus wanted to do were to take a trip on the London Eye and to visit the Imperial War Museum. However, this was the week that the Eye was closed for maintenance and the Imperial War Museum was closed for some other reason, dusting or something.
So we had to look elsewhere for our thrills.

The Shard, standing at 1,016ft tall, is the tallest building in western Europe so we headed for that on a bright Saturday morning. A forty minute walk along the Thames and we went up it like rats up a drain-pipe, at 13.5 mph to be precise, as the lady in the lift informed us, very smooth indeed. 

 

Now if you want a fabulous view of London and have a suitcase full of money I would suggest going up The Shard. The view was spectacular (you look down on everything, obviously) and you could stay up there as long as you wanted, although I am sure that there would have been a loud "ahem" and a furtive glance at a wristwatch if we had set up for a picnic lunch.

You can see the London Eye way down below, but disappointingly I couldn't see our house from here. In fact I couldn't see a single field in any direction, it made me nervous!

Here is a view of 'The Cucumber', 'The Cheesegrater' and some other large buildings, oh, and some boats.

And of course, the birthday boy and some bridges, a river and some more buildings.

Anyway we had a great weekend, and we even went out when it was dark, twice!
If you can imagine ten levels up from a state of full alert, that is the level I was at.
I had to drink lots of wine to relax and finally, on the way home embarrassed the birthday boy the only way a loving father can!

Happy days, an enjoyable weekend but it was nice to get back into wellies and get out into that mud!

Water wonderland.

Wet, wet, wet, mud, mud, mud, thank goodness I have water and mud to deal with as it is a very nice way of avoiding any cricket watching. Thank goodness that's all over!
We are as wet as I can ever remember being here, the sheep down the road, now have their own swimming pool for example and with more heavy rain predicted today there is nowhere for it to go, ho hum and a farty lardy dah! Not much we can do about it so I am enjoying the dry bits in between. I am rather pleased with this photograph, taken on my new Blackberry Z10.

I was driving along through the Fonthill Estate last evening and had to stop the car and take a picture of another sheep field with an outdoor swimming pool, the colours were amazing. That's not a river running through the field, well it is but it's not normally there! At least we don't have alpaca swimming pools, although we could do a great line in mud wrestling rings! 

Shock news!! I have a picture of a dry alpaca, taken this week! Young Todd our Rose grey boy was looking rather splendid a few days ago when he was dry for about 20 minutes. I will be compiling a sales list over the next few days and Toddy will be on it, so if anyone out there is after a rose grey male, let me know!

 

Right, that's it, things to do blah blah blah!

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!