Just a quick update as promised to let you know what progress we have made in the last few months.

Firstly, our third cria was born on Easter Sunday almost a month overdue. It was a little girl with a lovely chocolate coloured coat. She was delivered text book style without the need for any assistance. She weighed 7kg at birth and much to our surprise tipped the scales at 10kg just over a week later. It is taking a great deal of thought to select a suitable name with an Easter connection so much so that David and Jossie still haven’t decided.

Since our animals have been busy growing luxuriously soft fleeces, Diane thought she aught to learn how to make something with it. So she enrolled in a felt making course and proceeded to clutter up the kitchen work surfaces with relevant paraphernalia connected with this craft. She explained to me that in order to make a scarf six feet long you must start with a piece of material twice the length.” It shrinks” she said as I looked at her rather dubiously. Of course she was right but I wonder how something more challenging like a hat might appear before the shrinking process and would it ever fit? Who knows, but I’m sure it will be interesting finding out.

Imogen and Inga have recently gone away on holiday to the alpaca stud farm in Tiverton. Imogen is on an extended dirty weekend. What sort of mother would take her daughter along to such a sordid event? They will be away until Imogen is conclusively scanned pregnant, a period of at least two months. We have picked a black stud male called Ikon as the sire and since Imogen’s mother was black there is every possibility her cria will be black, but life being what it is it could be any colour. Phoebe and Himma will be going on the same holiday soon, so it may be very quiet at West Webburn Alpacas for a while, although the two youngsters will return in June to be weaned.

The hopefully proud father to be.
Classical Ikon (to follow)

Our final bit of news is about Widecombe fair. After a lot of deliberation we have decided to have a stall at the fair so that we can bring 3 or 4 of our animals along for people to see. This sounds fairly straight forward you might think until you try and procure public liability insurance. The insurance industry being what they are, have assumed since they don’t really know what an Alpaca is - better assume it is closely related to a man eating tiger or a venomous snake. Needless to say they all want to over state the risk and charge a premium to suit. Anyway we eventually sorted out this and several other problems and it seems like we shall go to the fair. So if anyone is curious to see these man eaters, come and visit us at the fair if you dare. There will be lots of other things to see including fleeces and garments made from UK Alpaca yarns and fibres.

See how much Inga has grown, She is now 4.5 months	Himma in the snow

In the Future