The other day was a nice sunny day and the alpacas were hot. This was particularly the heavily pregnant mum’s too close to giving birth for me to want to risk shearing them.

I tried to take them over to bankside paddock but they made a bee-line for another paddock where the water buckets were scattered. So I gave in and started fetching water, I also got out the amazon themed paddling pool to make them feel at home – South America and all that.

It had a strange smell and elicited a lot of curious sniffing to check out the flamingos and parrots. Eventually they had small drinks form the slowly filling pool – it takes a lot of fetching and carrying to fill a paddling pool as I am sure lots of you know.

They were not convinced with the risk assessments and health and safety paperwork so wandered off and so did I.

Curiosity got the better of them though and fairly soon they were back having a go at stepping over the edge to get into the water – then there was no stopping them and Lalana made it her home for the next hour – holding the others at bay. Eventually her offspring from previous year’s joined her and then there were four! Great fun to watch and they seemed to really enjoy being able to cool down.