Today is the first of March and the official start of burn season, providing there is enough air volume travelling through the valley that is. As its blowing at about gale force 10, there will be no problem with air flow today. Sure enough the wind really fans the flames and during the day we successfully burn 6 of the 7 burn piles.

Our trusted farm hand Macario is going on holiday to Mexico today for four weeks and we are really going to miss him. Our eldest son Jamie who is 19 has agreed to stand in for Mac so all is not lost.

Two days ago I noticed that Santo one of our potential alpaca herd sires had a skin problem at the bottom of his front and back legs.
I examined him and concluded it was fungus of some kind . Which felt right as everywhere has been so very wet. So following the advice in the Norm Evans - Alpaca field Manual (2nd edition) I started to treat him with Betadine and Tinactin.

Here is a picture see what you think.



Later that day I had to speak with Dr Timpson from Crater Animal Clinic and told her about the previously mentioned problem. She asked me to e-mail through a digital photograph and later that afternoon she diagnosed mites.

So tomorrow morning Santo will be going in to the clinic for a scraping to determine if it is mites or fungus?..

Adrian Stewart