ASK MARSHWOOD THE VET VALE ALPACAS
Examples of poor shearing
once a week, visiting 94 year-old mother two or three times a week and caring for alpacas at home, of course! We have one part-time casual worker who comes in on Saturday mornings to help us, so if we need to be away early for a show he (or our son or daughters) sees to the alpacas for us and being one of Geoff’s ex-mechanics, he will also help with workshop work, although at the moment Geoff does all the aluminium welding himself. Geoff has now added aluminium and galvanised steel hurdles, and a stand-alone Easy-Pen system to the range. This new EasyPen system can be used with aluminium or galvanised steel hurdles in field, independent of any barn or building. It is also easier to set-up for demonstrating at shows. It used to take us up to two hours to set up and take down a show stand but now it only takes half that time – much less strain on the muscles! 2009 was also the year we had an infestation of mites as did quite a few other breeders, but thanks to some good advice from Chas at Mile End Alpacas and an article in the A0BA magazine by Dr. Ed McCaslin, DVM from America we invested in a micro-scope, sorted out which mite we had and treated accordingly. It wasn’t as quick and easy as it sounds but after some months of hard work and struggle we were eventually mite-free. We manage to keep mite-free by using Diatomaceous Earth powder which the alpacas love to roll in especially just after shearing. We actually had a holiday in 2009 and went to the National American Owners and Breeders Association Show at the International Exposition (I-X) Center in Cleveland Ohio which was amazing. The size of the actual building was astounding to start with, although only onequarter was being used for the biggest alpaca show we have yet attended. There were also several rooms for some very interesting seminars and downstairs all the fleeces were on show – 60 | Winter 2014 | ALPACA WORLD MAGAZINE
The males
hundreds of them from all over the US. We also met Dr. Ed McCaslin there and talked to him about his experiences in dealing with mites. He then invited us to his farm where he gave some valued tuition on how to take skin scrapes and how, with a microscope, to identify which mite was causing the problem. Therefore the first job on returning home was to invest in a microscope which we also now use to do our own faecal worm counts, having attended a course with Sue Thomas of Lyme Alpacas. Holidays do not feature much in our lives but this is the second three-week trip we have had in USA and Canada and we hope to have one more sometime. In 2010 we bought a champion male – Warrior of Alpaca Stud - to improve the quality and update the look of our crias giving them better facecoverage and shorter noses etc. He is certainly doing the job and he is such a joy to work with, he just gets on with serving the females with no fuss or frolics, treating them gently but firmly and he certainly knows when one of his girls is pregnant and instantly dismisses them. This year we sheared all 50 of our own alpacas ourselves, doing as many as we could each day in between other work and it was almost a pleasure without the pressure shearers put you under. It took us a little longer but we did the feet properly and the teeth if necessary, and best of all, we did it on our shearing table which saved all that bending down crawling around on the floor. In previous years getting a shearer when we want one, mainly due to weather conditions, and getting the alpacas shorn to how we want them to look has been a desperate struggle. It is understandable, to a point, as the shearers are always up against time and the weather. But see the photos and just look at what we have had to accept other years. Accept, or more usually, finish the job ourselves with the Easy-Pen and scissors/ shears. We usually send most of our fleeces to
UK Alpaca Ltd. - just keeping one or two to use myself or sell at the door. The three high spots of our lives with alpacas so far are:(1) The alpacas themselves – such a joy to keep and work with. (2) Way back at the beginning, 1999 I think, visiting Philip O’Conor’s quarantine building somewhere in Sussex and looking at 3-400 alpacas and 50 llamas all under one roof – just having bought our first four alpacas a few months earlier, we had never seen so many in one place undercover and so close at hand – it was a wonderful sight! (3) When, in early June 2009, we were lucky enough to be able to visit the AOBA Show at the International Exposition (I-X) Center at Cleveland, Ohio as mentioned above. We also went on to Niagara Falls and joined a coach trip from Toronto to Montreal via Ottawa and Quebec before flying home. Investing in four Alpacas in 1998 certainly changed our lives, taking us all over the country! We need to reduce our herd still more because Geoff would like more time to further develop the alpaca equipment side of the business. We have 50 alpacas at present, down from 91 at our highest point, but we need to reduce them to about 12-15; as even now we would not like to be without any alpacas. Finally, we must thank a few other breeders who, over the years, have given us help and advice – Chas and Rachel of Classical Mile End Alpacas, Nick, Terry and John of The Alpaca Stud, Philip O’Conor of Atlantic Alpacas/Alpaca & Llama Care, Ian Waldron of Langaton Alpacas, Joy Whitehead and Mary-Jo Smith of Bozedown Alpacas, Sue Thomas of Lyme Alpacas and the list goes on…..not forgetting our Vets: Robin Carpenter of Kingfisher Vets, Crewkerne (in the early days) and latterly Cat Bazeley of Synergy, Evershot.