Just a quickie

Lunch with the family went well and the kittens were popular. We had shut them in the barn whilst we had company because of lack of space but during the afternoon they had plenty of attention and luckily did not escape from their enclosure, even though they are both experienced climbers now.

Still finding new places to find eggs. We blocked a small hole behind the straw bales in the barn but whoever is laying over there decided to lay her eggs on top of the straw bales so we now have to climb up daily to find the eggs.

The alpacas are doing well and enjoying the few days of sunshine which we have had over the past week or so. They are eating a lot of hay and alf alfa now that the grass is not growing..

Our older dog, Tilly, who was so ill recently, is going to visit a cardiologist tomorrow. It is a 2 hour trip and I am not sure if it is a good route to go down. I don't think she should have any treatment which involves anaesthetic but maybe they will be able to control her erratic heart beat with medication.

The shop is still doing well as are our internet sales, although I keep having to remove stock because it has sold out. I am trying to get to grips with altering the website myself but so far have not been very successful.

Hotting up for Christmas

Our farm shop is getting very busy now and stocks are getting low. We'll be millyonares soon!!

The alpacas are coping very well with the changeable weather. One day it is freezing cold and the next milder and very wet. Last night we had torrential rain and many roads were blocked by flooding. Luckily the farm is on a slight slop so there are usually some dry areas, but we are dreading doing toe nails next week. Often when everything is so wet - and don't forget what a wet summer we had - we find that their pads are getting damaged. It also seems to make their toe nails much softer and they grow quicker which makes them more liable to get damaged.

We will also be topping up with vitamin D to make up for the shortage of sunshine.

All the field shelters were very wet this morning and the alpacas had obviously taken shelter from the terrible rain as they all needed to be mucked out much more than usual. Mike put straw in them to try and absorb some of the mud and poo.

The kittens are doing very well. All the dogs have met them off lead now but we think they are still a bit small to face six dogs all at once. I took them outside as they have been kept in the house for their first week here so they get to know where home is. They immediately went under the house and did not seem in the least bit interested in coming back to me. I had deliberately chosen a time when they normally get fed, so luckily after a while the lure of a bowl of Whiskas outweighed the adventure of the great outdoors. I think I will leave it a few more days before I risk losing them again.

The chickens are still laying a few eggs a day. They are getting very demanding and perch on the feed bin when I go near it and then mug me for their layers mash. They are venturing a bit near the A358 sometimes so I think we will have to think of a way to curtail their free-ranging a little bit. Don't want scrambled chicken.

My Mum's sister and family are coming to lunch tomorrow - that makes 9 in all, so I had better get into domestic goddess mode and start peeling potatoes and making pastry now.

Really cold

Well yesterday was the coldest up to then but this morning was even colder with the frost really thick on the ground. Still let's hope it will kill the bugs - blue tongue - midges etc:

We are going through a lot of hay and alf alfa now that the grass is not too good. Alpacas are used to sparse conditions in the Andes so they probably feel right at home.

Kittens

Today must have been one of the coldest of the winter so far. When I did my morning rounds with the dogs even the thickest and soggiest mud was set.

The alpacas looked very happy. It must be a real treat for them to have kept their pads reasonably dry for a change. Mike has put some new hay racks in the biggest shelter where the main herd goes at night and they had emptied both racks and were busy demolishing the hay in the mobile hayrack in the field. Looks like we'll have to order some more hay shortly.

We have been out all day today and got back just in time to put the hens to bed - or rather shut the door on their house, as they had already gone in. They are such obliging creatures!!

The kittens are starting to be assertive and began mewing almost as soon as we got home. I assumed correctly that they thought it was about time they were fed.

They spend most of their time in the puppy pen when the dogs are around but they treat the living room like the wall of death when they are let out to run around. They tightrope walk the chair rungs. Last night one of the ran at the gas fire, which, luckily is enclosed, bounced off it with one paw, and obviously found it rather hot!! She spent ages licking and looking amazed at her poorly foot. We inspected her front paws very carefully but could see no sign of permanent damage, so hopefully it is just a painful lesson learned.

New Beginning

Hello if there is anyone out there still!!

I knew I had not made any blog entries for a while but was shocked to see it is well over a month since my last update.

Well we have several new additions to the Laurel Farm family. First of all we now have eight chickens. I have never really liked birds because they flap around and as a child I used to get chased by my uncle's geese. I have, however, always associated having chickens as part of farm life. The same uncle also had chickens on his farm and they were truly free range including frequest forays into the kitchen. Mike has always been against having them as he thinks they attract rats, but as I pointed out we already have animal feed around the place so a bit of layers' mash for chickens won't make much difference!!

Searching for a hen house was a major problem as most of them see to cost about £200 and there are few second had ones. Those that came up in the Free-ads either sold very quickly or were too far away. In the end Bob (who sells hay and straw to us) told us that he had seen some cheap sheds in Focus. Off we trotted and found a shed of just the right size reduced to £100.

Mike built a nesting box, fixed up perches and cut out a little door for them to go in and out of. he also added skids and made it as fox-proof as possible.

They are delightful and a great source of amusement. We thought that they were going off lay in November until we found a stash of 15 eggs in the hedge and only yesterday I found 8 eggs hiding behind the bales of straw in the barn.

Millie, one of our border collies, has developed yet another new talent on top of competing manically in agility, she is a brilliant alpaca dog and today she scented out eggs, picked them up without breaking them, and after a lot of persuasion gave them to me. I am hoping to build on this great new skill and teach her to help collect the eggs daily!! So far the retrieve is brilliant but the present needs some more work!!

Well, I'll teach Mike to worry about mice and rats!! The latest arrivals are two cute little kittens called Polly and Soukie. They are eight weeks old and are destined to be farm cats but their (accidental) breeder tells me they have to stay in the house for the first week so they do not run away. They started off in the porch but this proved to be inconvenient so now they are in a converted puppy pen in the living room. The dogs are fascinated and line up to watch their antics. We have had them out a few times and although we have not allowed them to run free with the dogs around yet, everyone seems to be behaving very well.

Back in September we took some of our yearling alpacas to the village street fair and we found out that a lot of people did not realise that we sold alpaca products or that they could come and visit the alpacas, so we advertised that we would be having open days every Tuesday and Thursday until Christmas. These have been very successful indeed. We have sold loads of wool and many of our hand knitted jumpers as well as the hats and clothes that we import from South America. Now there is rarely a day when we don't have a sale in the shop and we are also selling one or two items a day on the internet. A lot of this is obviously for Christmas but we are hoping to build on such a good start afterwards.

Tilly Tonkers, my lovely hairy lurcher who has been a great agility dog has been seriously ill this week. She was sick and then became very listless last week. She was diagnosed with kidney failure and her heart was EXTREMELY slow - only 20 beats a minute and irregular.

She was in vet hospital for 3 nights but came home on Friday and today she is looking quite good and back to eating, drinking and walking fairly normally. She is not out of the woods and she had more blood tests today. The feeling now is that the heart problem may have caused the kidney problem rather than the other way round. After the blood results we might be looking at scans etc: to find out what is wrong with her heart. Fingers crossed it will be something that can be controlled with medication.

I will try and be good and keep the blog more up to date. It would be a bit rash to say I will do it every day!! Some days there is not much worth reporting.

Relaxing

Well, nothing much going on on the farm - just the usual routine, putting out hay, water, alf alfa and occasionally Camelibra (a supplementary feed).

The weather has been beautiful today and we have all taken advantage of the delayed winter weather which will surely be on its way soon.

Nothing to do with alpacas, but yesterday I went out on a relaxing day. Four of us went to Centre Parks at Longleat for a Pamper day. It was ladies only in the morning but open to everyone in the afternoon. They have a very smart suite of various spas. Mostly variations on the sauna but from different parts of the world. We samples the flavour of the orient as well as Finland and from the UK a giant jacuzzi.

It was a beautiful fine day which we could see through the roof but all our activities apart from the lovely warm jacuzzi were inside. We relaxed on water beds and dined on a healthy salad followed at tea time by an unhealthy cream tea!! The signs said that peace and quiet were the main requirement but luckily most of the time we managed to get the various spa experiences to ourselves - or maybe our laughter and chatter just kept everyone else out when they saw us in there!!

At lunch time a doe and her fawn strolled past the window and casually looked in before moving on. The whole compex is very well run and is set in a landscape of woodland and lakes, which gives you the feel good factor before you start.

I phoned Mike to tell him we had arrived and that my phone would be switched off until 6 p.m. and in response to his question "What will you be doing?" I said "absolutely nothing". In good company doing nothing is an art form and all four of us agreed we would like to repeat the experience. Thanks to Elaine for organising it, and to Lindsay and Caroline for their excellent company.

I am just going to have a dull old shower now but I'll imagine it is the tropical scented rain shower that I took yesterday!!

Back again

I know - I have not been keeping the blog up to date. I really meant to but life got in the way. My Mother who lives with us has only recently started to recover after being rushed to hospital whilst we were away on holiday. She has lost a lot of her mobility and also was very depressed. Although she was not really any trouble I felt I had to give her more time than usual. She now has a carer who comes in twice a day and helps her get washed and dressed, showered, makes her bed and generally attends to her physical needs. I now only prepare her meals and do her washing and ironing. This means that life is more or less back to normal and we have a lot more freedom as Karen, Mum's carer, is very attentive and alerts me or the doctor if any further problems arise. She cannot get into our car any more so when she needs to go to hospital for tests, Xrays, etc: an ambulance comes to collect her and brings her home. Again this means I have much more freedom as there is no need for me to go with her because she seems to get priority to save ambulance time and so is in and out much more quickly than when I used to take her.

All is going well on the farm with 12 cria this year of which 8 are female. Unfortunately and unusually we had seven girls who turned out not to be pregnant although they were spitting off after being mated originally. We found this out when they were scanned at the end of last year but decided not to do any matings after October as we have previously experienced winter births which are both risky and a lot of extra work if the cria have to be kept in for any length of time. Two of the seven were mated outside the herd and have been remated. They are both spitting off and we are awaiting a positive scan to confirm the pregnancies.

We are hoping for a lot more successful pregnancies next year. Perhaps thirty or more depending on how many are sold prior to the births.

Our latest cria is Lady Jessica and she is pictured here with her mother, Calpurnia. The other picture is of one of our collies, Jake. he loves to play football. Unfortunately I did not capture him earlier as there was a very amusing sight of all the alpacas gazing at him over the fence and watching his football antics. He has accidentally nosed his ball over the fence and is unsure as to how he is going to get it back.

We are holding open days every Tuesday and Thursday from November to Christmas to sell our knitted products. We will also have some new imported products from Peru and some Christmas Wreaths made by a friend of mine who makes really lovely natural decorations. If the chickens arrive we might even have some eggs to sell, and possibly Mike might get round to cutting some logs from the stacks of wood we have around the farm left over from the tree surgeon's visit and from the hedge laying last year.