Emma met me at my house at 9am. We quickly popped to Jenkins’s for layers pellets because Riley’s ducks are eating machines (a bit like him really 😂) I drove into the paddock and Emma shut the gate after us. I let the ducks out and fed them while Emma went to the barn to feed Rascal. I put one bag of layers pellets in Cai and put my waterproof trousers on. Emma came back with a dog cage from the barn. We put that in the back of the truck. It’s to make a safe ‘cave’ for Skye during the fireworks. I let the Peckys out and she put the other layers pellets in Cai. “There’s an egg in here!” “I know, it’s Neil’s!” The minute it came out of my mouth, I started laughing. It amused me. “He didn’t lay it though, he just collected it yesterday.” I was still laughing as we went over to the barn. I had a cool bag with the bottle of vitamin ADE in it. I couldn’t find a cool pack in the freezer so there was an ancient bag of cauliflower florets that wasn’t fit to eat. It made a great cool pack though. This bottle had to be kept below 8°C. Emma filled the 2 hay bags and I went off in search of the continuous syringe applicator. There it was, in a chocolate tub. So we took all that with us and off we went.
Down at the LST, we put the hay away as there were showers forecast. We were going to put it out later. I went to fill the food bucket and I’d left it up by the boys’ pen. I went for that. When I was filling the bucket, Emma went to tip rainwater out and get the boys in. When I walked back up with everything, they were already in. “Are we spraying Casper and Buttercup?” I decided we should and I went back to the LST for Pig Oil. It’s a spray that I’ve seen recommended recently. I had to get the hay out to get at it and the weather looked better so I decided to take that too. I could have saved myself some work and left that hay up by the boys in the first place 🤦♀️We put the food out first and then the hay. We trapped the boys reasonably easily by the hay using the extra barrier. I was Body Condition Scoring and injecting the ADE in them. I had to put my waterproof glove on my right hand because they were all wet. Once I’d done that, I had to part the fleece, pull the skin up to tent it and then put the needle into it. This is how to do a subcutaneous injection. It goes in at a sort of 45° angle. I pushed it into the skin until I felt resistance and a sort of pop. The needle is then under the skin. I pressed the trigger part to dispense the ADE. I pulled it back out from under the skin and then released the trigger, this causes it to refill the measured amount set on the applicator. In this case it was 1ml. We repeated this with all of them. Casper also had the Pig Oil sprayed on his dry skin. They were released and we went over to the girls field.
The plan in here was the same as always. I went in to the pen with the bucket and called the girls. Emma got the blue rope to stop them from going across the field. She had hung it up last time so we knew it was ready to unloop. I went in, the girls came, Emma went off up the field and the rope ended up in a knot. She frantically tried to undo it all, the girls in with me got disinterested and started filtering back out of the pen. Chaos! I hid the bucket of food in the blue shelter and went behind Emma and tried to go up the field as fast as I could. The one in the lead, at the top, leading them all away was Liv. She had just been down the bottom of the pen with me, trying to get her head jn the bucket. She must have sprinted up the field! I started shooing them and for once, Liv didn’t make a break for it. The girls started to go in the right direction and Emma finally got the knot out of the blue rope. They all went in. Well, apart from Luna. She refused. Emma’s arms are longer than mine and she can reach out and push Luna’s rump and remain out of kicking distance. Luna still wouldn’t go in. Emma had to to a combination of pushing and pulling until Luna was in.
We got the girls into the crush (it’s just a narrow area, called a crush, they don’t get crushed at all) pen in small groups and got on with the job. I filmed myself doing the body condition scoring and also the injecting. If the videos are OK (I haven’t had time to check them yet) I’ll post them soon. We’ve got a great system going now. Emma gets the girls in. I do the BCS, record that on my phone, inject and then open and close the gate. We repeated this until they were all done. Some of the white ones kept jumping out though. We saw Cleo, Chrissie and Kylie do this. I wished I’d filmed that. “White Men Can’t Jump” with Woody Harrelson was a favourite film of mine and Josh’s. White men might not be able to, but white girl alpacas certainly can! 😉 When we got Buttercup in. I sprayed her with the pig oil and we were done. Emma fed the girls and I collected everything up. We left all the things outside the gate and walked part way up the slope to the store of alpaca poo bags. I had to sort out 10 bags for Neil.
Grass had been growing in these bags. The alpaca poo is just so fertile. I rolled the sleeves of my hoodie up and put the gloves on. This job was going to be messy. We searched for the bags with the least amount of grass. There were 4 without any. Then we got 6 more and I lifted the grass out along with the clodges of poo underneath. These clodges were put in a bag. I have something in mind for them. Then we opened up a broken bag and a put a generous shovel in each of the 6 to replace the poo that had come out attached to the grass. There was 💩 everywhere by the end. It was up both my arms. I took a photo (not of my arms) so Neil knows which bags to take up. We collected all the things but I had to carry the gloves at arms length because they were filthy 🤢 We walked up, put the things away in the barn and checked for the 3rd egg. There wasn’t one so Neil will have to lay one later 🤣 I went home and got started on dinner, after scrubbing my hands and arms like a surgeon.
As soon as dinner was over, I filled the dishwasher and walked Skye. It was sunny and warm! End of October? Well it didn’t feel like it was! I rang the garage about my car and it’s not ready so that will have to wait. I sent an email off for my father and then left for Tregurnog. The two ram lambs were in the exact same place out the back of the barn. I’m wondering if they are just cardboard cutouts 😉 I went to check the ewes and rams then. I took a few videos of the state of the stock and rail fencing. It’s terrible and falling over. We just can’t get the people responsible for it to take responsibility and replace it 🤬 While I was walking around, I got confirmation of a walk on November 1st. I messaged Lisa to say it had finally been confirmed and she’s going to come and help. Hopefully, we’ll go to Edwards’s cafe for food afterwards. We’re both looking forward to food and another catch up. With everything OK there, I left for home.
I’ve had a sit down, a cuppa and been doing the blog. I also sent out the invoice for the walk on Friday and ive had a booking for Monday afternoon. It’s been a busy day. Neil did Garth Hall before going out on his bike. Big day tomorrow, taking the settees apart and doing some dump runs in preparation for the ‘new’ ones on Monday.
Helen x
