No more whinging the sun is out! Plus very pregnant lady chases fox with mop (she needs alpacas)!

Both I and the alpacas are MUCH happier in this bright, frosty weather. I get quite proud of them out in their paddocks with their frosty backs on very cold mornings when other animals have to be tucked up in barns. A couple of neighbours in my village have expressed concern about them being out overnight in these temperatures, giving me a great excuse to talk about the superior qualities of their fleece!

The only inconvenience is having to keep the water from turning to solid blocks of ice within 5 minutes, not something I'm always successful at but it's really noticeable how much more alpacas drink when the grass is frosty and they have to rely on hay.

On other matters, I find that it's this time of year that foxes start to get bolder, I guess it's down to pack dispersal, cold weather and, a bit later on, cubs to feed. My (very) pregnant friend had to chase away a young fox from her chickens today. Bare foot (literally) and (as I said) pregnant, my friend went in fast pursuit of said fox wielding her kitchen mop, but she had to get within 2 feet before it released the hen and went off in search of another. She then grabbed an air rifle and ran (sort of) around the garden shooting into the air, screaming and yelling to scare the fox away. Fox eventually went off, hens were retrieved from various hiding places, and waters remained unbroken. All is calm now. Apparently the incident has been captured on their CCTV and I am currently begging her husband to post it on facebook.

Of course what my friend needs is alpacas to guard her chickens from the foxes...

More Mud and Motivational Issues

I'm finding this winter harder than the last couple, the constant half-light and rain is sapping my motivation. Does anyone else have to give themselves pep talks and motivational speeches before they venture forth at this time of year? Although the snow and ice of the last couple of winters was a pain at least it was accompanied by bright days. But it won't last forever - the snowdrops are out where we are (Wiltshire) and the daffs are coming up.

My difficult female and I (see previous posts) are being kind to each other for the moment. I'm hand-feeding her Camelibre outside of the pen and while I'm doing this giving her TTouches down her neck and body. She's very happy to be hand fed so I'm using this to my advantage and seeing if I can condition her into associating being handled with good things (i.e. food). Doing this outside of the pen instead of inside really works as she is free to escape and so consequently does not feel threatened. I'm hoping that in a few weeks someone will be able to stand with a feed bucket while I pop an injection into her side. I'll also try using a neck wrap on her at some stage to see if that helps keep her calm. Putting her in a small pen definitely did not work as she felt very threatened and I received several showers of spit.

Lastly, I have a couple of lovely knitter friends who are doing sterling work with the yarn produced from the 2011 shear. I, too, attempt a few knits but the results are not as fabulous as these ladies can produce. They are knitting for my first craft fayres that are coming up in March and April (including the Fibre Arts Village at Futurity with other SWAG members) which is really great. I find myself staring obsessively at other peoples knitted clothes for ideas. Is this normal?

Getting Stuck in Mud

Our paddocks slope gently (well, mostly gently) down to a canal and we have good drainage, so we don't have a problem with boggy ground in wet conditions. However no-one can escape mud at the moment. This is our second winter keeping livestock and as last year the ground was frozen solid for about 4 months we were not prepared for the skid-fest conditions that met us this weekend when we tried to drive a load of hay down to our shed. I watched as my husband (looking resigned to his fate) and dog (looking alarmed) skidded out of control in the 4x4 past the shed and headed for the ditch at the bottom of the slope. Luckily he managed to steer into a post and his fall was stopped. How stupid of us to try and drive on the steepest bit of paddock in these wet conditions.

Then, of-course, is started to rain and we quickly had to drag a ton of hay in bags up the slope to the shed. Joy.

We abandoned the pick-up. We had two choices - wait for better conditions (possibly in spring?) or get our next door neighbours JCB to pull the van out and have swathes of pasture carved up as a result. However it all came good in the end as the following morning we were blessed with the first (and possibly only) hard frost of the winter. The pick-up sailed up the hill without a care in the world. Phew.

More frosts please.

The Art of Patience

After the last 4 weeks of being spat and moaned at and not being able to provide an A, D & E injection I finally got fed-up and contacted Julie Taylor-Browne of http://www.carthveanalpacas.com/camelidynamics.html for some advice about my almost-berserk female (see previous posts). I felt that I was just not making much progress and was getting disheartened. Two years ago I went on Julie's 2 day Camelidynamics introduction course where I learnt (amongst many other things) about the benefits of using a body wrap on a nervous animal. This is when you tie a long bandage in a specific way around the body to form a sort of "hug" that releases happy endorphines and helps to calm an animal. Temple Grandin uses a similar technique with her "squeeze chute" for cattle (see http://www.grandin.com/ and her book "Animals in Translation"). HOWEVER I don't fancy tying said bandage around this girl when I'm on my own in a remote location, she's big and strong and angry. However Julie has come up with an apparently very effective alternative - the neck wrap. So I've bought one from her website (it has a handy clipping mechanism) and will let you know how I get on.

After reading the articles on her website I now realise that I need to go at this girl's pace not mine, i.e. the learning process may take months and I need to give her plenty of time to assimilate and learn new behaviours. In the mean-time I need to get some A,D & E into her without having 2 men sit on her while I do it. So I'm going to get her into a mini-pen we have on-site and distract her with food, perhaps then I'll be able to lean through the pen bars and pop a quick injection into her shoulder skin without having to provide any further restraint (another Julie-tip). At the moment I can hold her round her neck happily while she's eating and feel along her body - I'm hoping food will provide not just a good distraction while I'm performing nasty husbandry procedures, but also a useful tool to help her learn to relax and behave calmly.

Also, everyone has started eating hay like it's going out of fashion. I've got some particularly sweet and green stuff this year. I often fancy a mouthful myself now the weather has turned inclement.

Camel Whispering Part 3

Well, the A,D & E injection attempt on the difficult girl didn't go as well as the lambivac injection had done previously. Instead of just myself and my husband I had a few other helpers that day and it was too difficult to keep everything and everyone calm. We only managed to get 1ml into her and then I called a halt as she began to shake and bounce around and required the force of more than one person to hold her.

So I've decided to work with her 3+ times a week on my own for another 3 weeks before trying to inject her again. I'm being very patient and just standing with her in the pen, putting my arm out and doing some gentle TTouches and holds on her neck. No spitting at all today!

A,D & E, Lambivac, Toe-nails and Camel Whispering Update

The clocks have gone back so now is the time to start dosing everyone with A,D & E. I'm using Hipravit this year (supplied by Inca alpacas) as I prefer an injectable to a drench (more reliable and no scary choking). It's also time for the lambivac vaccinations so we've set to and got everyone done, throwing in a pedicure for free.

Getting all of our herd done was no problem (well, not much, we have a kicker who has curly toenails - always tricky). But tackling the challenging girl in the herd I manage is another story (see previous posts). She needed her lambivac but I didn't want to undo all the work I've been doing with her by having to man-handle her. So my husband and I caught and held her as gently and quietly as possible. She spat like billyo but managed to stand for us with my husband just holding her neck and steadying her body (it helps a great deal if the alpaca is balanced on their legs properly). The gentle approach definitely worked, but after the injections she started to get too stressed to handle without force so I trimmed the ends off her toenails just as she stood, distracting her with a bit of camelibre.

Even though we've been on holiday so camel whispering sessions have been limited, I can now stand in the pen with this girl and hold her around the neck while she remains quiet so there has been good improvement. A,D & E injections on Friday will be the next test.

Camel Whispering

I've been doing some research recently on "berserk alpaca syndrome" as I felt I needed to think more about why the girl I look after has become more difficult to handle. Is it a dominance thing or a defensive thing? How berserk is she? Over the last couple of years I have definitely seen an increase in dominant behaviour from her, e.g. nudging me if I'm in between her and the trough. However it's only in the last 6 months or so that she has started to spit at humans and become difficult to handle during husbandry duties. This marked change in behaviour came shortly after some dogs got into their paddock and targeted her for their attack. She came out almost unscathed but was shocked. On reflexion I think she is using dominant behaviour to defend herself, i.e. she will only spit if I corner, move or handle her. She won't stand quietly if I hold her around her neck and it takes two people to handle her before she will submit and stay still.

I've taken what I know from camelidynamics and combined it with a bit of Monty Robert's "Join-up" method for horses to come up with an action plan. I tried this out today:

- I penned the female on her own by inticing her in with food. The other girls were just outside the pen and were relaxed throughout.

- I let her eat and then stood very calmly at her side by her shoulder with my arms down and not making eye contact. She remained calm until I stretched out my arm to touch her neck, and then she started spitting. I didn't react at all to her spitting (not nice for me) except to lower my arm. I wanted to show her that her spitting would have no effect and that I wasn't going to back off, but neither was I going to harm her or grab her.

- After three times she stopped spitting! I stood next to her calmly for a couple more minutes, and then was able to reach out and give her a few TTouches on her neck with no ill effect, in fact she started chewing the cud.

- I then tried to touch down her body, but this resulted in another spit. In response I lowered my head down to the ground and, interestingly, she copied me. We both stayed like that with our heads lower than our bodies for a minute or so. Then I straightened up and, still to one side and not making eye contact, found I was able to hold her neck gently and TTouch her body. I wanted to end on a high note so I let her out of the pen after this.

She was making her anxious hums throughout this session and clearly wanted to leave the pen so even though I managed to make physical contact while keeping her relatively calm I feel I still have a long way to go. I'll continue working with her in this way as the results from this session were so positive - fingers crossed this continues.