Our next cria was born 2 days later on 2nd May at 9.10am & like all Paula Rego babies is jet black. With this one I only just missed the birth, I had been watching Paula in the shed & decided to leave her for 10 minutes & when I came back Ralphie was already born. He is gorgeous, very inquisitive, when we take the camera into the field he always comes over & most of the shots are of his head getting closer & closer until there is only his nose in the photo!
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| JandJ Chastity |
On Tuesday 31 May, the day after half of our herd of alpacas had been sheared Chastity arrived. Her mother Amazing Grace had not been sheared as we do not like to shear our alpacas in their last month of pregnancy. Amazing Grace is Martin's favourite alpaca, when he feeds them Grace always comes over to be fussed. We missed the birth, after the busy long day before we did not look into the field until 7.30am and Chastity was already up and about. Grace likes to have her babies early 9.15am has been the latest but 7.30am is definitely the earliest. This is Grace's 5th cria with us, she has had 3 boys Max, Lex & Rex & then last year we had a girl Chartity and this year Chastity, so our naming strategy for Grace's cria has moved to Emmerdale's Dingle names.
We have decided to take the plunge and have 2 open afternoons in October for anyone who is interested in owning an alpaca. In the 6 years we have owned alpacas we have learned such an amazing amount about these beautiful animals & would like to pass this on to anyone else who would like to own them too. Whether it's 2 or 3 little boys in a paddock behind your house or 3 or 4 breeding girls like we started with, life will never be the same, alpacas are so endearing.
