Winter - Classical MileEnd Alpacas

Moving on
Nigel and Ginny Cobb bring us up to date with their
activities in Spain
The excitement is building here in
Spain as we eagerly await the arrival of
twenty-one alpacas from the UK, if the export
restrictions for FMD and BTV are ever lifted!
Arish and Sue Turle of Alham Valley
Alpacas have kindly agreed to invest in our
business over here, by providing nineteen
animals, most of which are pregnant to some
of the best studs available in the UK. Their
generosity is overwhelming and their belief in
what we are doing here is encouraging to say
the least. We already have buyers for two of
their breeding females and more interest all
the time; long may it last.
The consequence of this opportunity is that
we will have to move house, as we need more
land; by this time next year our herd will have
grown from 19 to about 65. We have buyers
for our finca who are willing to wait till we can
re-locate, thank goodness. But we are having
problems finding something suitable. The
hunt is on-going and no doubt this will mean
another large building project is on the cards.
We are expecting some 30 births, spread
throughout the year unfortunately, for all sorts
of circumstances, too numerous to mention
here, with no respite other than December
2008. Alpaca hell! Plus the first births for
a couple of our clients as well. Ginny has
birthed a flock of 100 ewes with great success
and of course alpacas for the last four years,
not in this quantity though. Let's face it, there
is no comparison between the potential value
of an alpaca cria and a lamb. This will put a
lot of additional strain on the situation as this
is our livelihood and we strive to give them
the very best care at all times. Wish us luck,
please.
It is the goat birthing season here now and
we have already secured our supply of "liquid
gold", in the form of goats' colostrum. Since
being here we have found it invaluable, when
necessary. Blood will be taken shortly from
our boys and spun locally in Ronda. The
plasma will join the colostrum in the freezer.
Having everything necessary at hand before
the event is a must – just in case.
Alpacas de Andalucia had a remarkable
day last month when a group of twenty single
parents and their children came to visit. As
luck would have it on the chosen day it rained
cats and dogs, so we postponed the visit till
later in the week. We had a great afternoon,
introducing them to Max, Martin, Bonita,
Lulu and the star of the show Zac and gave a
little educational stuff as well. The children,
aged between two and twelve behaved
impeccably and the alpacas did their bit. Ella
was too interested in her public to take much
notice of where her feet were going and fell
in the swimming pool, shallow-end, thank
goodness, and broke a toe nail. All is well and
she now has no more public engagements until
her cria is born in the Spring. We received
good local press coverage for the event and as
all the visitors live in the UK, we are doing our
bit for the home industry. Ian and Elaine Love
proprietors of Hotel Molino del Puente (www.
hotelmolinodelpuente.com), whose idea it was,
are going to promote similar events for their
guests in the future. Every bit of publicity
creates awareness of what we are doing.
In Estepona, on the Costa del Sol we
attended the Over 50's exhibition. We were
actually promoting Nigel's business of writing
English and Spanish wills, but we gave over
half the stand to our alpacas. To be honest
we had not expected much in the way of real
interest – lots of 'what are they?', but nothing
serious. It could not have been further from
the truth. In fact we now have four serious
potential buyers, a spinner who thinks alpaca
fleece is amazing and other people wanting to
come and see the farm. It just shows you that
publicity, where ever you can get it, may bring
results. We are following up these leads and
hope that it will create new owners in this part
of the world.
The current disease situation is causing us
all concern and one wonders if the market
will ever be the same. Certainly there will be
more conditions on the movement of alpacas
and with this in mind we are trying to get an
initiative across Europe for a level playing
field. In our minds we need to get the National
associations working together to resolve the
issues of disease control and prevention for
camelids. There are too many differences
across the various countries. This may seem
unimportant to the UK owner, but as Nick
Harrington-Smith pointed out in the last issue
of Alpaca World the UK needs the rest of
50 Alpaca World Magazine Winter 2007 / 08