Some photos from the last few days of 2008:

On a walk up the valley:

Silly Ridill, that’s not your mum !

At the Tinkers and Traders gathering:

The beach was a little farther than we thought, but it was a good walk anyway.

Fun in the garden:

Happy 2009 !

Pinocchio got some action for the first time today. We had tried last weekend, but jasmine was not yet receptive. This morning we tried him with Topsy and Jasmine. We did run into one problem though.

When the testosterone flooded into Pinocchio’s little brain, he started chest-butting Topsy and trying to bite her legs. It took some time for him to figure out that there was another set of behaviours driven by testosterone. Eventually the light bulb came on, and he was trying to mate Jasmine. It helped heaps she was already sitting so he did not have to chase her down.

He is going to have to get better about the orgling, as right now it sounds like a sad, infrequent hiccupping noise. He had a few minutes of “success” with Jasmine. The next few days he will have plenty of other opportunities to practice, as Topsy, Cindy, and Saffron are now waiting in queue.

Saffron, who dropped the her cria early back before Christmas developed the same problem she had last year- her udder was so over-full that it was sore and she would not let her cria nurse. (note- we have never seen another lpaca with an udder that huge. Anyone want to breed a line of milking-alpaca?) This time we were ready for it. The cria got plenty of bottle-fed colostrums the first day, and by the next day (when we had confirmed she was not letting him drink) the milking began. As it is a 2-person operation, we could only milk before and after work. We were lucky that the Christmas holiday came later in the week, as milking lots helped take the pressure off, and she started letting the little bub (Ridill) feed. Then it was a few more days of milking maybe once or twice a day.

For comparison, here is the udder of one of our other lactating females, Cindy:

Now things seem to have sorted themselves out. Ridill is feeding and growing, and we have not had to milk Saffron for a few days.

I expect this will be a regular feature for all her cria. At least we know what we are getting into in future years.

It has been a busy week.

Last Tuesday Topsy gave us Gandiva. Then on Thursday Concetta gave us a little bay-brown boy, Gungnir. Then on Saturday Cindy gave us a medium fawn girl, Curtana.

And with that, we were free for the Christmas holiday. The next cria was not due until mid-January. So I was rather surprised today to find that Saffron had dropped a little light fawn boy. Part of the excitement came from the fact that we had them grazing the woods on the neighbors’ place. When the herd left hte woods, the little guy got left behind and lost in the long grass and trees. Saffron went back to look for him, as did I of course! Interestingly enough, Cindy heard the “where is my baby!” plaintive humming from Saffron, and *she* also went to look for the baby, with her own little Curtana following along behind. Interesting instincts and behaviors.

While the new boy is premature, he is not very dysmature (so while early, he is not under-developed). He is 7kg, mobile, and quite “together.” Now we just need to make sure he is feeding. Saffron has a mega-udder, she loos more like a Jersey cow than an alpaca. Last year it was so swollen it was painful, and she would not let Mora feed. We had to milk her out about 8 times, and tie her to a fence, before all came right (and Mora’s persistence helped lots, too).

Now we should really have a break until the next cria. Jodie is not due until mid Februrary. If she drops in 2 days, then we may have a problem.

Slow Top had a vet appointment on Wednesday. For the last 2 years or so he has been in slow but steady decline. Every time he was weighed, he had lost another 100-150 grams. His eyes were a bit sunken, his coat was getting scruffy, and he was sleeping lots. Between the host of drugs, the new food (switched from Friskies to Iams) and the warm summer weather, he has staged an amazing turn-around. Tam and I had been commenting in the days before the appointment that “it was like the clock had been turned back a few years.”

Indeed it had! In 10 weeks he had gained 900 grams! He is now just over 5 kg, and he has not weighed that much in more than 2 years. He is looking better, and acting much perkier. Many of the old (occasionally annoying) habits are back including demanding to drink out of the sink, and trying to wake us up early so he can get his “special treat” (the jellymeat that conceals his morning pills).

I don’t know if this will extend his life span, but it has ceertainly improved his quality of life immensly, and that really makes it all worth it.

And for those of you back in the US who know Rasputin- would you believe he has become a total lap cat? And a spanking slut. It is all so very wrong. I don’t know if we should blame Bill or karl for the spanking fetish.

Pics of the new babies. We’ve got two boys and two girls so far — at last, the expected ratio ! Rollover for names.

So far, despite every one of them being born late in the day, they are all healthy and well-done, and their mothers — even the first-timer, Topsy — are all onto it and doing great. Knock wood.

Closer to the house, Stephen has gotten onto a gardening kick. We have raised beds of veggies, two whole beds of strawberries, a new home-built plastic house (currently hosting bell and chili peppers) and an attached netting house (blueberries !). W00t! It’s strawberry season at the moment, and we have carrots and sugar-snap peas coming online, plus herbs galore. Tomatoes, squash, and assorted other random stuff will be along later in the season. We bought some more fruit trees, and are attempting to give them better shelter from the wind and possums this year.

Oh, and we have broccoli. Lots and lots of broccoli.

New Zealand, not having California and Florida, has fruits and vegetables that are very seasonal.

It is currently strawberry season! They are plentiful, cheap, and oh-so-good. The rest of the year the strawberries are imported, expensive and tasteless. This week I scored 5 large punnets of over-ripe strawberries from the fruiterer for only $2.50. Sure, half of them were bad, but the remainder made a two big smoothies and a milkshake!

Plus our garden strawberries are now coming into season, and while not as perfectly-shaped as the ones in the stores, they are even tastier.

And then there is the Broccoli. I planted broccoli for the first time ever this winter, 6 plants. Five survived, and I harvested the first one on Monday, and it provided 3 meals worth for the two of us!  With the other plants ready to harvest, I see we are going to be eating a *lot* of broccoli in the coming weeks. Amazing how good it tastes when it is fresh and organic.

This weekend we hosted our annual pot-lucky Thanksgiving Dinner. In a fit of optimistic  madness, we expanded the invite list. We now know that we can in fact fit 17 people in the dining room, around one lengthened table no less! We don’t have enough chairs- or forks- but people were warned and appropriate extras were provided.

I thought I had prepared an overkill-amount of Turkey, but I had not factored in the locust-like powers of my friends. We were all amazed how the food disappeared.

It also seems that nearly everyone brought both an entre and a desert. We had, what, 8 pies? My pancreas quivers in delight.

A very successful evening, enjoyed by all. And after digesting a bit, we got to go out and look at (and pet) some of the baby alpaca. Wheee!

Joy popped out another boy today. Like her last two, he’s big, fully done, and ready to go. Tearing around the paddock already at a hour old. Here is Max, Yvonne’s 1/4 Clydie, welcoming the newcomer:

No, Max is not wearing a muzzle to keep him from eating the cria. It actually has a mesh in the front of it, and keeps him from eating too much grass.

This last week we have gone out and helped the SPCA in their annual street-appeals. Last Saturday we met up with Grahame, Sue, and their youngest daughter Rochelle in Upper Hutt- we brought Zahir, Zafar, and Hob. (In a few weeks they will be the new owners of Z&Z, and were very happy to get to take them out and play with them!) I took Hob off in one direction, while the four of them went off in another with the alpacas.

We raised a good deal of money for the SPCA during our 90 minutes on the street. My best was getting $5 from a Nun. The most touching story came from one woman who had lost her dog of 18 years the night before. Hugging Zafar made her feel better, and in gratitude she put $20 in the collection bucket. A great example fo the healing power of animals, I guess.

Yesterday I took Hob and Nazani to Coham Court in Porirua for the Wellington SPCA street appeal. We did pretty well again, though it was a bit tough wrangling them two by myself. Lots of cell-phone cameras in action. Nazani was the star, standing there while being cuddled from all directions by a half-dozen people. Hob was in a “don’t touch me” mood, and would neatly side-step most attempts to pet him- while maintaining proper llama manners and decorum, of course!