From little eggs......

..... hatch little ducklings, our smallest Call duck so far!  But I am pleased to say ALL of this hatch pass the 'good ducks sit' palm test for calm personalities!!  And they are all v cute!!

We have them in blue bibbed:

 Blue fawn:

 Buff:

 And the teeny guy, who may well be white!

No baby llama - will a duckling do?

Sweet Pea continues to hold out on us, but the incubator is popping today.  The eggs are those rescued from the nest of my dear little apricot girl who was taken by the fox!!  First out is a lavender bibbed :)

Cheer Up Flowers

Its 16 days later and still no Sweet Pea cria - today Freya bought flowers to brighten the place up and I'm trying very hard to be 'cheered'!!   For her part SP is as happy as a clam and doesnt seem in the least perturbed by the passing of the calendar - as soon as we have a baby, I'll let you know - meantime enjoy these vibrant flowers!!

Introducing Accapacca Bracken

Today Jim and Connie Styles delivered our new boy Accapacca Bracken who is a lovely little medium grey boy.  On paper he belongs to me, but in real life he's Freya's foray into the world of alpacas, she's hoping to make a good return on her investment by pimping him out once he's certified :)  He has rose grey tips but is medium grey underneath and has a very long fleece already!

Here with Joeley with the rest of the gang, she managed to plant a kick while I was taking pics!! to get me back for this morning's halter training sesh I suspect!

Bracken with Freddie - both will benefit from shearing!!

Joeley - butter wouldnt melt in her microwave!!

Lead and halter star - Maggie May

Alpaca 'young ones' chatting to the llama studs Carter and Totem

Carter this afternoon - looking very elegant :)  Hope he gets a brother or sister very soon, Jim and Connie think Sweet Pea is behaving exactly like a girl who will pop tomorrow - hope they're right :)

Still Nothing Doing!

Sweet Pea still hasnt popped!!  She was first in the queue for brekky as per usual, and wasted no time getting on the ouside of her bowl of camelid museli!!  Today - with her best 'what are you staring at?' pose:

Sweet Pea has taken a very strong dislike to Cleo, who cannot put a foot right as far as SP is concerned, and for every foot wrong there is a spit waiting for her!!

With no baby llama to photograph I've turned the camera to the garden.  The flowering quince is getting more and more coral pink as the flowers age - not a bad thing in my book!

The irises are starting, not huge blooms but gorgeous colour, another nice surprise in this inherited garden.

As is this double jonquil.

The garden is full of red brow finches - see!!  OK not the best pic, but trust me there are dozens and dozens of them!!

And the swallows are back!

No baby llamas here - here, no baby llamas!

Yesterday was Sweet Pea's due date but she is still pregnant and we have no new baby llama yet :(  So at about 4pm I took the camera to record her huge bellied unevent!  She was with the alpacas down near the duck and chook pens and as I got close I notice movement in the yards out of the corner of my eye - there not more than 20 feet away was a fox and between me and it were about 12 ducks.  Neither the fox nor the ducks seemed to be aware of each other!!  I started yelling and leaping about and the fox turned and trit trotted off - no real hurry!!  Meantime the ducks formed a V and plainly planned to see the fox off themselves - DUMB DUCKS!!  I rounded them up and shooed them back into their pen, play time over early today!!  They were not impressed as it was a good half hour ealier than I would normally bring them in.  Then I went back to taking photos:

Here is Sweet Pea still looking enormous and wondering why I am always staring at her so hard!

Sweet Pea with Jemma, Maggie and Joeley - all pretty much as they were when the fox was nearby ie unphased.

Jemma, on the left with Maggie and Joeley on the right.  Jemma is Joeley's mother and you can see they look quite alike.... well I can!!  Maggie is the star of each day's halter session, she's not keen to stand still and get her halter on, but once its in place and the lead attached she walks beautifully :)  Cannot take any credit for that because she was trained by her breeder, Ruth King of Lavender Park Alpacas.

The new blacks - Maggie, Jemma, Phoebe and Joeley at the back :)

No show without Punch, and on cue Tarquinn struts in to see 'what's goin' on'!!  This morning's halter training went much better and Tarquinn walked forward and with me happily because I had llama lollies in my pocket, for them Tarquinn will stand on his forehead and wiggle his left ear if you ask him to!!  Now that Young Stockfeeds has gone under it will be difficult to get him to do anything because there will be no llama lollies even for ready money!  While a lot of their products were very poor quality every llama I've met loved their 'alpaca pellets' better than anything else!

Next I wandered off to see 'the boys' and on my way I met Gerald our gander who gives more trash talk every day, yesterday though he seemed quite mild.

Totem went to the same school of curiosity that Tarquinn came from, plainly the camera needs to be investigated.

A more standard pic of Totem checking to see if there is any brekky left in his bowl - out of luck!

Lastly I noticed 3 wild ducks up near the front gate - 2 flew off with great speed, but the third stayed, as I got closer I realised it was one of my ducks!!  I then quickly escorted her back to the pen with the rest of her friends, no fraternising with the local free loaders!!

Hopefully I'll have cria news soon!

The damage - post hatch - blue is the new black!!!

Well the hatch is over, the incubator desparately needs cleaning and the brooder is bulging!!  See!!  We have lots of ducklings in blue bibbed, blue fawn, blue and even one that I think will be blue fawn bibbed!!!  $10each unsexed, ready to go - please phone 6345 2397 - leave a message if unanswered as I am often outside!  Can deliver to Yass, Goulburn or Canberra

Ducklings - in NEW colours :)

This morning's hatch included a lovely little blue pied duckling and a solid (ie non bibbed) blue.  Both rare and unusual - oh and very sweet - both passed the good ducks sit personality test :)

Not a very flattering pose, but wanted to show the underside of this nicely 'pied' baby :)

Spring Diddle Ing

Its spring fersure and definite!!

The flowering quince is doing its thing, and very pretty too.

As are the grape hyacinths

 The prunus is stunning, no room to put a pin between the blossoms:

And the tulips are starting, though was hoping for more stem... but there you go ;-D

Skinny loves to be outside and eat grass, I cant think why because given any opportunity Kiki loves to mob him!!

Life is a cycle, and to remind me of this there was a dead red brow finch on the verandah this morning - if I were as clever as Laura and Linda Kemshall this would be the beginning of a clever series of drawings, but instead its just a pic of a little dead bird :(