The nitrate content of alpaca poo!

01/11/2009 by Rosemary.

A dreadfully wet and windy start to the day with a veritable stream pouring down the steps, despite us living on top of a hill.  Carl and Sam were out fencing, in full waterproofs, at 7am and they didn’t stop, apart from lunch, all day.  They managed to put up all the posts for the new paddock, we’ve just got to get the rolls of stock fencing tomorrow and Carl then has to make a new gate out of several rusty bits of old gate!   I wasn’t a lot of help as I became a bit dopey trying to work out what I am supposed to be doing now we are in a newly designated Nitrate Vulnerable Zone.  Camelids are, of course, not mentioned anywhere so calculating the nitrogen content of their poo floundered somewhat.  I have sorted out my ‘temporary field sites’ and ‘marked my map accordingly’ so I feel I must have got somewhere - where that somewhere is I do not know!  In the midst of this The Big Baby (the cat) caused a bit of a diversion by jumping up into my arms and relieving himself with a great sigh of contentment!  Luckily he aimed over my arm and just flopped down in obvious relief, I think he was too scared to go out with the wind howling!  After I had stopped laughing, mopped the kitchen floor, calmed Carl down, who is not a renowned cat lover, it was more alpaca tasks.  The girls were out in the hay field watching the fencing and chewing the string Carl had put up to get the fence straight so I had a chance to refill their feeder without them mugging me.  Spike, our soon to be castrated young boy, also loves his hay but has to battle with the sheep for it.  Our sheep love hay and eat it out of the haynet alongside the alpacas they are with; I didn’t think sheep ate much hay!

Batboy sent us some lovely pictures of Sam on his dream quad and finally, after fiddling around for ages, I have managed to resize it so he doesn’t look like Billy Bunter or Twiggy.  As The Wise Woman pointed out, my photos are normally resized wrong and I am pleased to say they generally make me look fatter that normal (not a lot, I admit).  I have to try to improve my resizing though as sometimes the alpacas look deformed - which they are not!

Down to 10 eggs today, thank goodness!

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