Following on the previous post, we toured several alpaca studs to find a replacement for Champ. But first we found Emma, very pregnant and looking for a new home. We thought she might be just what we needed and today we found that she has had her cria, a white boy weighing over 8kg and very healthy. Here are a couple of photos of them when he is just a few hours old.


They will be coming to join us on the farm very soon now, together with Emma's last year cria, Milo, a cheeky fawn boy who will be our new herd guard and keep the new baby company in six months' time when he has to be weaned.

While the kids were still quite small we had a visit from Marcus, our grandson. He was very impressed with the goats, particularly Meggs, the surviving son of Honey (erstwhile goose companion). Meggs had extra fuss when he was tiny, so was quite accustomed to being picked up and cuddled. He's a little large for this now but still has some time for people and loves a fuss. Marcus was able to have him on a lead and go for walks.

When the walks were over it was time for a cuddle and Penny, bolder than her twin Tuppence, wanted in on the act.

Maybe Meggs will be making an appearance at a local Show next year. Meanwhile his horns keep growing, alarming to think they will be like Henry's horns in a year or so.

It's been a few months since I had time to create a new post, months in which we have been extremely busy with fencing (never-ending) and looking after new youngsters.
Lambs and kids appeared together, more or less, and all needed some extra care with rather wild weather. The kids were a learning process for us, having heard that they are more delicate than sheep. We had bought little jackets to put on the kids and ended up with one on a lamb, a slightly larger animal, but it saved one of Candy's twins, now called Jinks. Most of the kids wore their jackets for a few days until their feeding was established and their mothers were sure of how to look after them.
Angora kids are the cutest little creatures, just like small puppies and very affectionate. No we don't eat them.

They are several months old now but still affectionate, and white as could be, unlike lambs which quickly become dingy gray like their mothers.
Then the geese got clucky and started laying. Two of them. One seemed to be quite sure of how to manage the matter, whereas the other, Alice, was a bit unsure, being only about a year old. She ended up abandoning her eggs to help older mother care for her chicks. So we had two ganders, Gozzy and Greybeard, Alice and Mother, all escorting seven little goslings everywhere. Talk about hysterical and over-protective - but the babies survived in spite of greedy crows' attempts to enjoy a tasty meal.

Blaze, the second mother, was not so lucky. Her eggs hatched with no support from the others, who were still obsessing over the original hatchlings, and her ten goslings diminished to four in one day.
Somewhat bemused by her success and possibly confused by the continuing cool weather, Mother went back for a second sitting and we're not sure whether these will hatch or not.
All this reproductive activity necessitated new yards, and some shuffling of animals around to where the best feed happens to be.

Fencing, like death and taxes, is always with us, in the country anyway. Right now, that's where we're at, so no posts recently. It has to be finished before the next trees get planted, and that's very soon, so back to cutting strainers, digging holes and whacking in pickets. Then the big rollout of ringlock, strain it up and finish off with the tie-wire. Very satisfying when finished, but not always as straightforward as it should be.

The new girls' goat yard is nearly finished and today we'll transfer them from the boy goats' affections so they can gestate in peace. Pictures to follow.
But in the meantime other work proceeds, such as new machine embroidery designs. The newest one, I wasn't too keen on the set at first, but having digitised two of them, I can see them decorating home bar surrounds, either as pictures or on bar-top linen. See what you think, here is one of them:


This seems a particularly happy design, looking forward to stitching it.