Flu and camelid news
Things have not been the best on the flu front - Gerry has ended up in hospital in Glasgow with viral pneumonia.He has not been well at all and has been on oxygen for over a week and now is being treated with the antiviral drug Relenza.He is slightly better but I can see his recovery is going to be long and gradual.I have not been able to go down to Glasgow as the kids both had flu and of course the alpacas needed tended. So it's been hard for me and I have had to temporarily move in with my parents to get some help with the domestic stuff.The alpacas have thankfully been fine during this period. They had m

Now swine flu
Since my last post things have been chaotic as the whole family has come down with flu. At first we thought it was seasonal flu, but Sorcha, who is an incredibly healthy girl, was laid so low that did wonder about what we'd caught.Then Finlay (our three year old who has underlying health problems) developed breathing difficulties and I decided to get him to hospital. We were locked in isolation for two days while they got swab test results back, which showed he had H1N1 or swine flu.Finlay sometimes suffers from croup during a flu or cold bout, and needed some help with his breathing. It was a relief to be in a protected environment and he was given O2 and nebulised.

Update on Skye
The vet met me this pm to remove Skye for a PM. We had a very close look at her and it seems she had suffered a significant bout of diarrhoea, and could have simply become dehydrated.The vet wondered if it was the new grass, but she'd only been on that for a few hours. I wonder if she had been down for a few days and the move plus new grass had stressed her further.The vet said she'd treated a few calves over the past few days for the same thing.I recall that yesterday Skye's legs were muddy - on closer inspection it seems like she had dried in diarrhoea. So I am kicking myself about that.Gerry did get close to her yesterday to urge her into t

What to do? Another death
Oh dear, I hardly know what to say.Sorcha and I went to feed the girls this morning and we found Skye, our orphan cria, dead in the field.She had been hanging back a little yesterday during the move but she was eating alright and seemed fine otherwise. We thought she was a bit stressed by the move - we have another one who just freezes when you are trying to move them along and she is always fine after a few minutes.Obviously Skye was not well. It is just so hard to tell. She has been a little thin over the past while but eating well, both grass and hard feed. Her skin had really improved too since the mite treatment, and when I looked at it today, all th

Finally, the frisky pacas move field
Phew! What a palaver we've had simply moving the herd across and up the road onto new grass. Everything seems to have been stacked against it happening, but today we got the alpacas shifted, and when we left they were tucking into a few inches of greenery.We had a run of bad luck with illnesses etc and then we discovered the rhododendrons had grown right through the fence all along one side of the field. Gerry brush-cut those well back to make it safe.We spent the afternoon yesterday making the new field ready; moving lots of run panels, putting in water and the hay feeder and fencing off corner where the rhodies couldn't be cut back for aes