Dry day

A dry day at last, so we took the opportunity to give all the alpacas their vitamins. We don't normally do the whole herd in summer but as there has not been much sun we extended the normal dose of vitamins ADE to everyone instead of just the cria. We also took the opportunity to bring all the cria up to date with their vaccinations. Only the very youngest are now left to do when they are due, and of course the unborns.

We kept the farm gates closed all day as it makes it easier to deal with working with the animals if we have no interruptions.

After a visit to Tim Hey of Inca Alpacas (his stud Jack of Spades has covered a young black female of ours) we have decided that we want to re-jig the barn lay out to make it more user-friendly for husbandry etc: Tim has a brand new barn but Mike thinks he can adapt our high roofed Belgium barn to a similar design inside, albeit on a smaller scale.

We cleaned out all the shelters so that Mike could take the straw down to the bonfire in one go and release the trailer to move our dog agility equipment. We have decided to utilise about the only really flat paddock on the farm which is further away from the house (thus preventing the dogs inside getting over-excited when other dogs are running around) but it is not as far as the bottom paddock where we used to train. It also releases the paddock nearest to the house exclusively for alpacas who need special attention.