Down-sizing!

At the beginning of the week Faro and the rest of the boys were very interested in why the humans were moving lots of hurdles.  The reason was that we had decided to down-size the herd from 8 boys to 4 boys leaving our original 4 with us - Faro, Fergus, Fyta and fidget.  The other 4 boys, Gully, Gaucho, Wee Eck and Rufus were moving to a new home up in Portmahomack in Easter Ross.  Unfortunately Monday and Monday night especially were to see storm force gales again so we made the decision over the weekend not to move them until better conditions on Tuesday.

So here are the 'removal boys' at their new home on an 8 acre croft run by their new mum and dad, Alison and Brendan.  Regular readers of this blog may recall that Alison and Brendan have visited us several times having moved up from England and wanting to fulfil a long standing dream to have some land and own alpacas.  Who better to be dream-makers than these four boys?

Rufus (left), Gaucho, Wee Eck and Gully have a wander around the perimeter fences and sample the plentiful supply of grass.

'Big Sky' country in these parts as the boys take in the size of the paddocks and their new field shelter.

We left the boys to explore their new home and here they are looking out at Balloan Castle and the Dornoch Firth in the distance.  They seemed to settle down quickly with their new grass and so whilst we will miss them after these years we know that they will have a great time on the croft.

Back home, our boys were on fresh grass too so didn't seem to miss the others too much.  Here are Fidget (left), Fergus, Faro and Fyta.

And finally.................a long range shot of the 4 boys in their paddock.  On the far hill you may see the smoke of the 'muir burning' where old heather is burned off in strips to allow new growth for game birds.  You might have to magnify most of these photos to get better detail.  So now that we have a changed herd we'd better spend some time on changing this blog layout!  Have a good week.