Good weather and 'skirts.'

We've enjoyed a week of really great weather, frosty at night but beautiful during the days.  There is something very odd about looking at the weather forecaster's charts on TV and seeing the whole of the south of Britain bathed in frosty blue with -10 etc and the north of the country at +7!  No snow here thank goodness, apart from on the hills, so hope that those blog readers in the south are getting around OK in the cold weather.   Here are some of the boys coming up from the bottom paddock early one morning this week to see what is going on.  Fidget is in the front followed by Wee Eck and Fyta.

Gully arrives followed by Rufus.

Gaucho.

This was such a lovely morning that Fergus started paddling in the water trough - unfortunately the picture of that didn't come out, but here is Fyta standing over him with Gully watching in the background.  We take the water trays in for the winter and only leave the troughs out but as the weather  gets warmer the trays will be deployed.

Fergus and his pals waiting for their feed in the late afternoon.  All the boys have dirty knees  and some, especially Gully are still covered in dried mud.  They all still enjoy using their rolling spots, especially when the sun shines, but at this time of year the rolling spots look more like mud baths.

Rufus with Faro, Gaucho and Gully behind.  At this time of year the boys' fleece is very dense and several of them appear to have 'skirts' - you can see this on Rufus.  This is mostly guard hair, tough outer coating to the finer fleece underneath.  Faro's fleece is shorter and he doesn't have this skirt but Fidget has a really thick one.

And finally..........alpacas often have a superior look about them, as if they are looking down their noses - especially at humans!  Fyta takes this to the extreme however!