Hedgehogs of Lewis

We've now returned from our holidays on the mainland and brought back with us new additions to our ever expanding croft family. These are the much sought after exotic pet..... African Pygmy Hedgehogs.

Sonic (Named by our 4yr old son)

Tinsel

Anne has had her eyes on these for a couple of years now and (after much persuading) we are now proud owners of 14! They're settling well into their new surroundings and are providing hours of amusement (and cleaning out duties!). See our sister blog site - www.hebhogs.co.uk for more information and photos of the rest of our herd.

Alpaca Shearing

This week we had "Mr Clipper" from the US visit us to shear all our alpacas. He has been touring round Europe and is finishing his season in Scotland. When we bought our alpacas a year ago they were already shorn so this event was a first for us. Luckily the rain held off till we were packing up. Thanks to our neighbour Roddy, we managed to get a few pictures of the process.

Putting a noose around each leg, then pull!

She's going no-where!

All our alpacas made this noise throughout except our stud who simply relaxed and closed his eyes. I think he enjoyed it!

Nearly done, anything for the weekend?

Nice work Mr Clipper

It was back to peat stacking the next day!

Here come the girls

BBKing giving the girls the eye! Follow the leader

Our focus shifted back to breeding the alpacas last week and it seems BBKing has the hang of it now - he has covered all of our adult girls. We will repeat the process in the next week or 2 to check for spitt off's. (Female alpacas are good at knowing if they are pregnant and will be quick to tell the stud!)

final tally

Our 16 ewes have now all lambed so lamb watch is finally over! We have had 24 lambs in total, (17 girls and 7 boys). Everything was going so well until ewe number 13 lambed and showed no interest in her wee boy. After keeping her in the barn for a week with her lamb and holding her to allow the lamb to feed there was still no signs of them bonding so, "Oliver" is now on the bottle 4 times a day. He follows me everywhere even when I feed the alpacas in another field - he is really attached to my black wellies. 14 and 15 lambed no problem and this morning our last, number 16, had twins - a big boy and a tiny girl. The girl is too weak to feed, even from a bottle so we tube fed her colostrum and will feed her until she is strong enough to fed from her mum.

Harris with Oliver

16 with her twins - you can't really tell but the lamb in front is so small, hopefully she will gain her strength to feed for herself.

Although we've been busy with the sheep we have managed to try and start breeding the alpacas. A couple of times I had put our stud (BBKing) in a small paddock with the girls with out much success and then one day when moving some of our early lambers to another field BBking sneaked through an open gate and got amongst the girls and did his thing. Just shows you can lead a horse... Anyway, we will continue to give him opportunities over the coming weeks so hopefully he will have worked his way round the girls otherwise we will start penning him in and playing our "orgling" cd to get them the mood. (Orgle - the noise the male makes while mating -http://www.intrepidalpacas.com/Sounds/orgle.wav)

more twins.....

7 of our 16 ewes have now lambed - all but one has been twins so far! The girls are winning 9 to 4 boys.

It's a hard life

Enjoying the sun

The alpacas are fascinated by the new arrivals

Who's the Daddy?

Congratulations Mr Four Horned Ram from Scalpay Linen - you're a daddy!!

Our first lambs were born today around midday - twins - a boy and a girl! So now Lamb Watch begins in earnest as the rest of the flock look ready to follow suit at any time. By the looks of the bellies...the twins are going to have plenty of company!

And the proud foster parents...Farmer Iain....




...and Croft Wife Anne!



Even BB King dropped by to see the new arrivals and pass on his warmest congratulations to Mum!

Spring at last

It's been a while since our last post and although we've been very busy there has been no real news on the alpaca front.

A few weeks ago we decided to return Karl to the original breeder on the mainland as the 2 boys were constantly fighting. They had been kept in a field out of sight of any females prior to arriving here so I guess their hormones went a bit crazy once there were girls on the scene.

Anne has had some prototype garments knitted.....I'll let her blog on that when she gets a chance.

Now that spring has arrived we will soon be starting to breed the alpacas. We decided to give the girls a winter break… it seems such a long time ago since Rose was born. It will be another year before any new cria arrive but I know the wait will be worth it.

Our hebrideans are due their lambs in the next couple of weeks and as we haven’t scanned them it will be interesting to see how many there will be. We have 16 ewes so I expect we will average 1 per ewe with some not producing and some with twins. Cute photos to follow soon.

I’m afraid the batteries have been flat in my camera for a while, I’ll get them charged and promise some new photos in the next blog. Here are a couple I took back in February (click to enlarge).

We have SNOW!

Well we know most of you have been suffering the snow for a while now - but here at Black Sheep Croft we have been missing out! Apart from the occasional dusting there has been hardly any snow to speak of - not even enough for a snowball.

However, on Saturday the children were delighted to wake up to a snow covered garden! Cue sledging, snowballs and a snowman...

And even a snow-alpaca...!

The alpacas however, don't seem as enthusiastic about the change...

I have had a long weekend off school and have been catching up with all things alpaca. We have recruited an enthusiastic, talented and dedicated local knitter who is going to produce our first proper knitted items from Jasmine's wool!!! We can't wait to see the results!

Also, we have been contacted by The Heb which is a glossy, annual magazine and pictorial as they want to do a small feature about us and the alpacas.

I have eventually got round to felting with some of Jasmine's left over bits. The bag is wonderfully soft and such a lovely mixture of colours...BUT although it looks ok in the picture there isn't actually a proper handle and it didn't felt as well on the inside - so it's back to the drawing board!

Finally, I have been chained to the computer developing our new website, complete with shopping cart, however in keeping up with the current trend...it is a secret and you'll have to wait for the grand unveiling!

The boys are in town

After a 600 mile round trip and 2 ferries at the weekend I arrived back with our stud, BBKing, and his pal Karl. Alpacas don’t like to be on their own so we thought it only fair to bring Karl along for the journey and to be his field buddy. They are best pals and have worked together in the past on fox duty for other sheep farmers.

BBKing admiring the girls!

BBking (left) and Karl

To a Mouse...

Belated Happy New Year!

Sorry I’ve not posted for a while, we’ve been very busy over the holidays with visitors and then getting back to the usual routine with school, nursery etc.

We’ve been very fortunate with the weather compared to the rest of the UK although our kids don’t think so. This [pic above] is the worst we had of any snow and it was gone within a day. Stornoway and other parts of Lewis did get it quite a bit more but I think since we are a few hundred yards from the shore then the sea air has an effect.

Anne did get a chance to experiment with felting, not sure if we will put this into production just yet! Neddle Felted Guinea Pig and Needle Felted Mouse (using merino wool and glass eyes)

Felted Rose Necklace (wet felted and needle felted with sewn on seed beads)


I’ve been working hard on the fencing so that this weekend I can pop over and pick up BB King, our stud from Campsie Camelids.