It's another girl!

Yesterday, despite the horrendous weather, Nicholette decided it was time to give birth to her second Lewis born cria. Anther girl and proof that our stud was up to the job last year - we never doubted you for a moment BB King! Her last cria, Rose, was quite a difficult birth and required some assistance but she had no problems this time managing on her own.

We are hoping for 2 more cria in the coming week so more photos to follow.

We've also made some progress on the wind turbine front with the foundations now complete. The turbine will follow in about a month.

Baby News!

We are over the moon to announce that last night at 6pm Nichole gave birth to a gorgeous baby girl. As it was late it was a difficult birth, but thanks to our friends and neighbours Dina and Calum - she was delivered safely.


Despite the constant "cria watch" over the last two weeks, with excitement over the slightest yawning, rolling, head rubbing, Iain and I were absent for the birth. Typical! I was training on the mainland and Iain was in hospital for 6 hours while he had some minor Day Surgery. Of course, Nichole chose this as the perfect time to go into labour. Luckily, Iain's mum was on alert and called in Dina and Calum who are expert sheep farmers.


In the end there was only one name that would do for the christening of our new herd member - Dinah - of course! Mum and daughter spent last night snuggled up in the barn - but today Dinah has been testing her legs and running rings round the rest of the herd! She is just perfect!

Long overdue update

It’s been quite a while since our last post partly because our camera packed in but also because both Anne and I have been very busy. Anne has taken on a new consultancy job in addition to her teaching which means she is away a lot on the mainland. I have also made a bit of a return into the IT scene by doing some remote software packaging work.

With the announcement of the renewable heat incentive (RHI) due last year we were keen to push ahead with our plans for a ground source heat pump (GSHP). In February we finally got it installed and it has made a huge difference in terms of running cost and the manual effort that came with running a solid fuel range cooker / boiler. We’ve replaced this with an all electric range cooker which has just been great. No more complaints from Anne about the Rayburn not being hot enough for dinner because I’ve left it to late to stoke it!

Trench work for the 450m of pipe required for GSHP

Also, last year we were granted planning permission for our own wind turbine and things have been progressing with the foundation kit arriving the other day. We're scheduled to have the foundations installed in the next couple of weeks so I'd better get a hole dug fairly soon. The turbine will follow at some point in the summer.

Wind turbine foundation kit

Our alpacas are due any day now - No hurry girls, but the suspense is killing us. Although Rose was born here, this year will hopefully mark our first successful home breeding.

Swan taking a few day break on our croft before she continues her migration to the Arctic for breeding season.

Will blog more soon.

3 hogs, a dog and some veg

Our first litter of 3 African Pygmy Hedgehogs is now 3 weeks old so there is no risk of mum eating the litter if we handle them. They are so cute and soft to hold. See our blog Hebhogs for more pics.

Harris with one of the hoglets

Shiela and JF from Scalpay Linen paid us a visit to catch up and also collect this years' Hebridean wool. As a thank you they kindly gifted us with a cute little dog made out of their own Hebridean Harris Tweed which actually contains some wool from our own flock.


Today we popped along to our local farmers' market and picked up some much needed fresh produce so we have no excuses for not getting our 5-a-day. Everything is grown locally by neighbouring crofters, even the grapes! Bet you didn't know you could grow grapes in the Western Isles.

Back to School

Well, the summer holidays are over now and it’s back to the usual routine of getting the kids (and Anne) ready for school and nursery. This is actually welcome news for me as it gives me a little more time during the day where I can work on something with out interruption from the kids (or Anne!). Anne has only been given 2 days a week in school this year but over the summer has successfully managed to secure consultancy work delivering teacher training to schools in Scotland. She spent weeks developing her presentation and delivered it for the first time last week to 50 teachers at a school in Edinburgh. She already has about a dozen more dates booked before xmas so its looking very promising. Although this means she will be away a few nights a month it will mean she has less workload and more time at home than before.

Because of the wet summer we were quite late in getting our sheep sheared however we finally got there at the beginning of August. With all the lambs ear tagged and more independent from their mothers we sold 5 ewes and 10 lambs as a starter flock to a couple down near Carloway. This brings our numbers back down to a more manageable flock size of 25.



In our last blog we mentioned our new enterprise - breeding African Pygmy Hedgehogs. We had a mixed week last week with one of the older hogs dying. We agreed to take her on along with the breeding hogs as she was kept as a pet by the previous owner as she had cataracts in both eyes and was barely able to see. It’s a real shame as she was so easy to handle. However on a brighter point we heard our first squeaks coming from the nest of one of the hogs we have mated so we should have a few baby hogs for sale if all goes well over the next month or so. We’re itching to check in the nest but to disturb them at this stage may result in the mum eating her babies. Here’s a photo of my DIY hog house.... more photos to follow when the hoglets are out and about in a couple of weeks.


Not much news on the alpaca front although we bumped into a couple of distant relatives up at Eoropie the other week. Peter and his 2 lovely llamas have moved to the Ness area and now run a llama trekking business - http://lewisislandllamatrekking.blogspot.com We had a long natter about everything camelid and wish Peter every success with the trekking.

The girls coming for their evening feed

After many weeks spent stacking, bagging and collecting this year’s peat I finally brought down the last load today and this time I didn’t sink the 4x4 in the moor like last year! (http://alpacasoflewis.blogspot.com/2009/10/wind-what-wind.html) Here is what 500 bags of peat looks like. I just need to clear out the garage to get it all in now!

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