As the nutritional value in the grass deteriorates further, we now give the alpacas a handful of alpaca nuts each day. We have been feeding Saturn since we bought her as she is a nursing mum (to Mercury) but we are now feeding all five alpacas just to top up their grass/hay diet. We have to be careful that the boys (Neptune and Jupiter) don’t get too fat and equally careful that Saturn still gets enough so she can continue to provide a bit of milk for Mercury. We are actually hoping that she weans her quite soon to allow her body to then concentrate on what we hope is a growing foetus! Both she and Venus should be pregnant as before we bought them they spent a month with an entire male in their field. We have not had them scanned and probably won’t as it should become quite obvious if they are ‘with cria’ or not. Their due date is in June sometime so they are almost half way through their 11 month gestation period!
It will be seriously exciting to have 2 cria born on the smallholding and we very much hope for 2 as they will then be great playmates for each other. Mercury was hugely playful when she first arrived with us (at 4 weeks old) but had to make do with the sheep as her buddies which did not always go down well – with the sheep!
Finally, not such good news, we seem to have a bit of a leak again near our spring/well in the bottom 3-acre. We have a little stream trickling down the middle which seems to be a bit more than a run-off from the 4-acre!! This is another reason why we need to consider moving the cows quite soon. Andy (who put the drainage and water trough in for us) is coming over on Thursday to check it out!!