Guess the sex!!

Lavinia, a really pretty light fawn girl has just given birth to - you guessed it - another boy.  He looks as though he will fall into the new beige colour range as he has a trace of fawn along his topline, but cannot be sure until he is properly dry.  We name our boys from a list of Spanish boys' names which I downloaded ages ago.   We thought this would be appropriate as the alpacas come from South America, where Spanish is the national language in most countries.  We are on the Vs and he is going to be called Laurels Don Vitas - which is quite apt as he seems to be full of life already.

Last night we celebrated the news that we have been given planning permission to convert part of the existing barn into a house and to build a new barn which will be bigger and much more useful than the one which was already on site.  This will give us a new burst of energy, and whilst we are very comfortable in our little log cabin it will be lovely to have a bit more space and get all our belongings out for use again.  It is also good to know that we will not have to leave our beloved Laurel Farm.  

Ideally we could have done with some females being born so we could sell off the older stock without diminishing the numbers of breeding females too much.   We might have to have a big rethink once we know the final numbers and sexes.   We have already decided that we will use Alario this year to cover as many females as possible as he seems to be very fertile and generally throws more female offspring than male.   They are usually good quality too.    In the past we have not used him over whites but we are thinking maybe he would produce fawn cria, which would be lovely.  Hopefully his imput will redress the balance of the sexes.   The main problem is that he is related to many of the herd so we will have to be careful when setting up his matings.