All aboard…

Phew! We just got through the craziness that was the Christmas weekend and with the exception of Maxy fighting off a minor viral bug (knocking on wood) he picked up from his cousins, it seems we the humans of CCNF are all unscathed and happy. Wish I could say the same was true at all of our barns. Two separate foot injuries have reared their ugly heads recently. First we had Juliet’s two month old cria, Undici, fracture a bone in one of his rear feet. Thankfully x-rays showed that a small bone chip had just been broken off but was situated in such a way that with the help of a splint we were able to stabilize things and are already seeing great improvement in his use of that leg again.

The other injury wasn’t so simple. On Christmas morning Kim and Jen found one of our males, Shockwave, with an old rusty nail (literally) stuck all the way up into his left front foot. Our best guess is that it was in there for at least a day or two given the stench when Jen extracted the thing. In any case it was a gift from the old Wheeler Camp (which gives our road its name) which used to sit where the Stud Barn is. They used to use the area behind the camp (now one of the three paddocks that service that barn) as their dump. Though we have picked up all sorts of old bottles and things over the years as they have made their way to the surface, we apparently missed one nasty nail. Shockwave is thankfully improving has well though he’s not a big fan of the daily wound flushing and wrapping with poultice pads that we are subjecting him to.

It seems it’s tradition to leave poor Kim with a good foot injury or two whenever we go away as tomorrow we’re headed off on our annual sailing trip to the British Virgin Islands. Time to get back to my second favorite environment (this farm being my other) again. We’re all looking forward to just having some down time away from the hustle and bustle of farm and school. With my Godfather and his partner, Babette, unable to come with us this year because of major reconstructive shoulder surgery for Stefan, we are instead traveling with Scott and Ann Young and their two kids. The four kiddos should have a blast together to say nothing of the adults! We’re really looking forward to it. The Big Guy in paradise? I kind of like the sound of that. Internet access on the boat is spotty at best so I’m not sure what the next week or so will hold in terms of posting here on the blog but if you truly have nothing better to do with your time you can always check out my Twitter feed (@CCNFalpacas) for which I need only a decent data signal on my phone to put random guff out there into cyberspace. If I don’t get a chance to post in the next few days, Happy New Year everybody!