How many hours???

This week we owe a big thank you to Debbie and Paul (Barnacre Alpacas), who kindly offered to deliver our two new females (purchased from Bozedown Alpacas) when they were collecting their own girls. However, I think that they might have slightly regretted their kind offer, when they were stuck in one traffic jam after another on the way back. Having left Reading at 2pm they arrived at ours at 10.30pm. The alpacas had spent so long in the trailer they seemed to have multiplied, as I am sure Debbie will be explaining soon. In order to give their girls and cria a rest, Debbie and Paul decided to stay the night (I would have said in order to give themselves a rest... but as we talked alpaca until nearly 3am and we all had to be up at 6am... I think that they left more tired!!).

Bozedown Celestrial and Bozedown Magic Charm have both settled really well, and are very quiet to handle. I think the fact that they have both been shown a lot, probably helps their confidence (especially when they kept winning championships!)

"you'll like it here...she's a bit of a pushover...play your cards right and she hand feeds you carrots!"

 Not a great day for photos as it is pretty dull, but it is at least dry...

Magic Charm and Celestrial enjoying the Cumbrian views.

Both are big strong females with great capacity (and lovely fleeces). They do make Lady Gaga and Snooty Boots look very girlie...although Lady G and Boots do have diva tendencies...we definitely like ourselves!

 Lady Gaga

Snooty Boots

As someone (you know who you are!) is trying to persuade me to part with Foxy Sox and Lullaby, I shouldn't really put cute photos of them on the blog...but here they are;

Foxy Sox now 18.5 kilos...now, here is another potential diva... "look at me"

Lullaby...hard to believe it is the same alpaca who couldn't even lift her head for a week when she was born.

On Saturday we had visitors morning and afternoon. In the morning the new owner of six of our females came for some hands-on training. She (sorry I didn't ask if they wanted to be named) was an absolute natural, getting stuck in trimming toe nails, giving injections and weighing all the cria. Not only did they do all the work for us, they took us out for lunch too...cheers folks!

We got back just in time to do some sweeping up before our afternoon visitors, who had come to see Bendrago and Marco (aka Cute Pants). I am really pleased to say that the boys will be going to a lovely new home in the Scottish Borders, where they will be joining four other boys. 

People always ask how I can bear to part with the little ones born on the farm; it is hard, but when new owners are so keen to learn about welfare and ask all the right questions, it does help. Then, you can enjoy the pleasure that you know alpaca ownership is going to bring for them. You also get to meet lots of lovely people.

Thank you to everyone who has asked after Finesse; she is slowly improving.