Sunday 20 Jan. ’19
It’s that time of year again folks, first bunch of youngsters weened off and walking lessons have started…..much to their delight, Not!
Apologies on how this looks published because some nasty little entity in the cyberworld of the interweb thingy has altered ALL the settings on WordPress which operates the blogg of which I try to write…….they didn’t bl+*dy well ask me if it was alright to do that and actually, NO, it’s not ok and I’m not happy about it as I can’t work out how it works now and can’t figure out how to change to the settings that I want…….why can’t people leave things alone……..mutter,mutter,mutter!
I suppose I had also better apologise as I usually do about the length of time since our last catch-up…….nothing new there I hear you say, except it has been even longer than usual this time! As I say I’m only comfortable when lying down so by the time we’ve hobbled about the farm doing the animals or fixing things, chopping wood or the myriad of other jobs that need doing I’m usually fit to drop……so I do, nice big mug o’ tea,lay down and immerse in a good book for a few hours ……..Not sitting in front of a un co-operative computer screen attempting to convince it to do as I ask and not what it feels that I should do!
Moving on………..
We’ve got a poorly hen at the moment…….well that makes a change from a poorly ‘paca I guess. Thought she was ‘egg-bound’ so popped her in a sink of hot water for a while to give her a bath and loosen things up a bit…….it does work sometimes.
and then a quick blow-dry to get her all fluffy again and we’ll see how she fares.
So back to the weanlings……….
We’ve split off the first 5 from their mums, all 7 months old or thereabouts now, here’s Efra, Hiccup & Weaver with poor old gelding Fergus on the right who every year has to act as ‘uncle’ to look after the newbies.
The five join Clyde, Duck & Willy up in the big barn along with the 3 adults who are there enjoying extra feeding as they are a bit on the thin side and need building up. It’s nice to see that the newbies have taken to eating ‘hard food’ straight away even if it is off the concrete floor edge as they cannot quite reach the trough!
Willy having a cuddle as they all play around after breakfast. Many people say that you shouldn’t cuddle or play with young ‘pacas as it can make them un-manageable when older, they can loose their respect for you as ‘alpha male’ and then they will class you as another alpaca, fight with or ignore you and generally become un-controllable and dangerous. I have to say that we have never come across this behaviour with ours although we do limit the playing with them and walk away after a few minutes so I feel as with everything else ‘all in moderation’ is no bad thing……and it does make them all easier to handle as they grow.
This is little Clyde, Atlanta’s cria from August, hoping to grow as big as Codama one day…………. he’s our little shetland pony sized pocket’paca, he’s a happy chappy,fit and healthy, got a lovely fleece………but he’s just sooo small !
………..and by comparison, the mighty bottle fed Hiccup, 8 mnths old and is positively humungus and thriving well!
Well, another short chat again I’m afraid, sitting here too long now but I do have plans for a bit of a photographic tour of the ‘funny farm’ soon so I’d better make a start………err, tomorrow then I suppose !