Can’t believe we are almost at the end of January. The weather has been very wet and windy which has resulted in very muddy paddocks and alpacas.
Whilst alpacas generally do very well in the UK, they do not absorb as much sunlight as they would in their native homeland of South America. Therefore, they need extra A, D and E vitamins which can be given as an oral paste or an injection. We choose to inject ours and we do this at least twice through the Winter months. Ours were injected last weekend, when we also condition scored all of them and trimmed their toenails. It is important to condition them by feeling their spine on a scale of 1 – 5 of how much fat they are carrying on their spine because with all of the fleece they have it would be easy to miss a skinny alpaca. Ours were all fine and indeed some were a bit tubby!
We have been busy booking our shows and events for this year and are looking forward to attending some new ones.

At the time of updating our latest news it is the evening of Christmas Eve. Although it has been quite a miserable rainy day today we managed to spend time with the alpacas this afternoon when it stopped drizzling and filled up their hay mangers and gave them some whole sugarbeets. They love nibbling on the sugarbeet and it is particularly good for the lactating females. They will have carrots and apples cut into batons with their breakfast tomorrow as a Christmas Day treat. Over the Christmas period we will start the weaning process of the cria and if that goes smoothly we will do some more halter training with them if it is not too muddy.

In the New Year we will be booking our events to attend and will hopefully see many of you again as we go out and about with our tradestand and of course when appropriate some of our male alpacas who love all of the attention they receive.

We wish all of our customers, both those we have met and internet customers a Very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year and for those people who may be reading this that have received some of our products for Christmas, we hope you love them as much as we do.

We have been very busy with our trade stand at events each weekend since the beginning of November. We are also busy processing internet orders to both UK and overseas. We are finding many people buy a pair of socks from us at an event and then once they have experienced the benefits of the comfortable alpaca fibre they contact us for more pairs – the socks sell themselves!

If you are thinking of ordering for Christmas, please do not leave it until next week as we will not be able to guarantee that you will receive your parcel in time.

We are looking forward to being at home over Christmas and spending time with the cats and alpacas.

We have today added to our website some beautiful crochet scarves made from Rosey’s fleece. Rosey is our very special, 1st prize winning, rose grey girl. Her fleece is beatifully soft, and incredibly fine. The rose grey colour is a soft pastel natural colour with a hint of powder pink, truly gorgeous.

We only have a very limited number of these available.

We now have a choice of 13 different colours for our knee length socks which are suitable for all country pursuits and ideal for wellies. These are in 2 different styles and can be viewed under knee length socks and country socks. We believe we may have the largest colour choice of this type of alpaca sock in the UK.

The gallery has been updated and now has pictures of all 3 of our cria from this year. The delay has been because Augustus who is 8 weeks old now is always dirty. There are now 2 photos of him looking clean and gorgeous.

All of our cria are doing well and growing up very quickly. Our youngest cria, Augustus who was born on 19/8 has been the most advanced cria we have ever had. At 3 weeks old, he started to eat the camelibra (processed specialist food containing all of the minerals and nutrients that camelids need). Our experience has shown they do not normally start to eat the camelibra until about 6 months old and sometimes it is nearer to 18 months old. He is bigger than Lancelot who was born almost 4 weeks before him and is the leader to start the pronking (where they lift all 4 feet off the ground when running round the paddock as though on springs) at dusk. Having said that though, he is also the scruffiest alpaca and we still do not have a photo of him without being covered in dirt from his rolling so we have not put a photo into the gallery yet. Perhaps we will be able to get a clean one of him if it snows!

We entered some fleeces into the British Alpaca Society National Autumn Fleece Show and prizes were awarded today. We were very pleased to learn when we arrived at the show, which was near Banbury, that Rosey, our pretty rose grey girl had won a 2nd place rosette. She is now 3 years old and although it would be better if she had more crimp and density in her fleece it is very soft and is holding it’s fineness each year. So, extra carrots for Rosey this evening!

Over the last couple of days 2 new sock styles have gone onto the website online shop. They are knee length socks and cushioned walking socks. They are both very high quality, hard wearing socks in a great range of colours. We now have 20 different sock styles to choose from – indeed something for everyone.

Our Christmas stock is now arriving so new items will gradually be appearing in the online shop.

At lunchtime today, after very little warning, Bonita gave birth to a white boy who we have named Augustus. He is a very big boy weighing 22 lbs and is already curious and lively. It will be lovely to see him playing with our other 2 cria from this year Sorrel and Lancelot.