Alpacas!

Angelina and friends

It’s been more than two years since I last wrote a blog, and I really didn’t think I had anything left to say, but a friend told me that she really missed reading about my goings-on!

I know it’s now July, but my first blog is going to be about June, so you might get two this month! But first of all, a very quick update on what I’ve been doing in the last two years. I am now a regular trader at two weekly markets – Castle Cary and Shepton Mallet, at which I sell my homemade preserves, cookies, scones and cakes, plus woollen items – hence the name of my stall – A Little Bit Sheepish. On the days when I am not at market I do gardening for a few local clients and several times a year I do dog-sitting and smallholding-sitting at various places. That’s my life in a nutshell!!

My son made his annual pilgrimage to the Glastonbury Festival at the end of June, so I had to prepare my old caravan for his arrival. Of course, last year there was no festival, so the caravan had had two years of ‘stuff’ deposited in it, which I had to sort through and put away so that I could construct the bed! What was originally the tiny shower room is now floor to ceiling with boxes and bags of knitting wool and vacuum-packed fleeces! I really must stop acquiring yarn and raw fleeces, but it is very addictive. If someone offers me a fleece, especially one that I don’t already have in my ‘collection’, I find it almost impossible to turn it down. Last year I went to help a friend when the shearer came, as she thought she would struggle to handle the sheep by herself, but the shearer brought a helper, so I really didn’t do anything to earn the Manx Loaghtan fleece that I was given! When the shearer heard that I did spinning he offered me a Wensleydale fleece as well! Oops!

Anyway, once the caravan was put in order and son had duly arrived, I had to leave him to it and travel twenty miles nearer to Bristol to do a weekend farm sit for some new clients. They had chickens and geese and ducks, a Labrador and … alpacas! I did explain, before I went, that I hadn’t got any hands-on experience with alpacas, but thought I would just be checking that they were all upright and had fresh water. However, Sarah explained that I would also be on babywatch as they were due to produce cria in July, but they could always come early! I was only staying one night, so thought I was probably going to be OK.

Before they left on the Saturday morning, Sarah showed me around their beautiful smallholding, located in a tiny hamlet, right next to a river. We let out the geese and the goslings, let out the ducks and the hens and then went off to see the alpacas. They are fed every morning with a special camelid feed and are also given hay, especially now that at least six of them are heavily pregnant. They kept their distance from me at first but came a bit closer when Sarah was feeding them. We then went to another paddock where the boys live to feed them and check that they were all OK. During the previous week Sarah had had a terrible fright when one of them choked on his dry food and she had to call the vet. All was well in the end, but she has been advised to add some water to their feed to aid its progress down their long neck – a bit of a design fault really!

Sarah had kindly printed me out a comprehensive list of everything that needed doing, which is brilliant, because you think you will remember, but you never do! We had run through the evening routine, so I felt quite confident that all would go well – how wrong I was! I had forgotten that people’s animals act quite differently when a stranger shows up.

The first job was to let the two goslings out of their pen in the paddock and walk them back up the hill to their dog cage in the first goose house, making sure that they had fresh water and feed available overnight. At my approach the goslings went into panic mode and started racing around their pen shrieking in terror, which meant that all the adult geese came over to the fence and started hissing at me, which just added to the goslings’ fright. In the end, I had to pick them up and tuck them under my arms and carry them back up to their cage.

The second job was to put the two groups of geese back in their respective houses. Luckily, although they hissed quite a lot, they behaved impeccably and put themselves in the correct houses. Next it was on to the ducks – there were three adults (1 male, 2 females) that were in one pen, and 7 large ducklings that had a separate pen and house but could squeeze through the stock fence and roam in the bigger paddock with the geese all day. However, the three adults had somehow got out of their pen – the male was in the large paddock and the two females were in the duckling pen, so I had to sort that out. Meanwhile the 7 ducklings popped back through the stock fence looking for their tea, except only six managed to squeeze through, the seventh was clearly too big (or thought he was) and started running up and down the fence looking for another way in. After many fruitless attempts to guide him round the fence to the entrance, I finally succeeded, only to find that the adult ducks had broken back into the ducklings’ pen and scoffed all their tea, and chased them back through the fence – it was all starting to get a bit farcical! Eventually, I got all my ducks in a row, and in the right houses, and could turn my attention to the hens.

I was beginning to feel that the gods were against me, and the chickens proved to be my biggest challenge. Picture, if you will, a small paddock in which about 30 hens are free-ranging. Within the paddock are 4 hen houses and attached runs, of various sizes; two of the houses and runs hold the majority of the hens and one cockerel, one house and run houses 4 hens and the last house and run houses one cockerel. According to Sarah, this is how the evening shut-in works: throw a small amount of corn into the run of House #1, all the chickens will rush in, then throw a small handful of corn into the run of House #2, some of the group will now rush in there. Close both doors on the runs and then walk the solitary cockerel down to his house and shut him in. Once that is done, walk back to the runs, where the 4 hens that live in House #3 will have realised that they are in the wrong place and will be waiting by the doors to be let back out. All chickens should now be in the correct runs. Job done!

What actually happened was: throw handful of corn into the run of House #1, most of the chickens rush in, move to House #2 and throw in more corn, some chickens rush in. Close doors to both runs, only to discover that there are still a lot of hens not in either run, and they are running round the perimeters of the houses, like the proverbial headless chickens, trying to find a way in to get to the corn. Open both doors to runs, throw in more corn, chase outside chickens round the pens towards the doors, only to see a bunch of chickens making their bid for freedom. Eventually, all but one chicken is in the two pens, re-close doors. Walk solitary cockerel to his pen - this bit worked well! Return to the pens expecting to see the 4 awaiting release (easily identified by their green leg rings). Wrong! Go into each pen and try to separate out the 4 from the melee of slightly worried hens, who all seem to think that they are in the wrong pen! After much frustration, I have 4 hens with green leg rings outside the pens and manage to get them into House #3. All of the hens that should be in House #2 have white leg rings – half of them seem to be in House #1 – I open the doors and try to remedy the situation with a resounding lack of success. In the end all of the hens are safely shut in the two runs except for the original escapee, who seems to think that she lives in house #3, despite the fact that she has a purple leg ring and I already have the Green Leg Four safely shut in! I give up – I open House #3 and let her in. Everyone is now safely shut in, not in the right houses, it’s virtually dark and I’m exhausted!

The final challenge of the day came when I finally got around to feeding myself and discovered that all of the kitchen cupboard doors have child locks on … and I had no idea how to open them! (We didn’t have cupboard locks when my two were small) Luckily, the cupboard housing the saucepans hadn’t quite closed and there were enough dirty dishes in the dishwasher to enable me to eat off a plate. Sarah had told me to ring her if I had any problems, but I was too embarrassed to tell her that I couldn’t open the cupboards!

Next morning, the routine went more or less like clockwork, there were no baby alpacas, and Bonnie, the Labrador, and I went on an amble around the smallholding and spent a long time sitting on a bank in a grassy meadow watching the alpaca boys eat their breakfast, to make sure that nobody choked. There were bees, Meadow Brown butterflies and Marbled White butterflies flitting from wild flower to wild flower and House Martins hunting insects low over the waving grass. A tractor was busy cutting grass, either for silage or for hay, on the hill opposite and it was difficult to imagine how close to Bristol we were. I still consider myself to be very lucky to live and work in such surroundings!

Baby Albert

Sarah and family duly returned on Sunday evening and I returned home. On Monday morning, Angelina, the large white alpaca gave birth to baby Albert – talk about a close call!