April, they say, is the cruellest month. T. S. Eliot clearly never ran an alpaca farm, or he’d have specified that it’s also the month when two cria drop early, and the government decides, without so much as a polite shrug, that your SFI application you’ve spent ages on and thousands on consultants is being cancelled, effective immediately.
Spring on an alpaca farm is a bit like childbirth: everyone talks about how magical it is, however let me set the scene. It’s 6:30am, the sun is rising beautifully over the paddocks, and I’m crouched in a pile of yesterday’s birthing towels, trying to persuade a four-day-old cria not to commit death by frostbite. He’s taken against coats, heat lamps, and common sense. Meanwhile, his mother is 25% concerned and 75% distracted by the fresh hay I’ve just put out. I understand. If I’d just given birth and someone brought me a meal, I too would forget my responsibilities.
This is April: no longer the quiet winter lull of maintenance worming and pretending to do accounts. Now it’s all birthing prep, vitamin top-ups, dagging the geriatrics, prepping the show team, and, as of this week, trying to figure out how we’re going to make up the income we’ve just lost because the new labour government has had one of its… anti-farm moments.
I should have known something was coming when my neighbour, Dairy Farmer Gavin, started putting up bird boxes like he was in a fever dream. He’s now got eleven. I asked if he was planning to rent them out as Airbnbs for Nuthatches. He laughed and said, “Nah, SFI payout. £45 per box per year. You seen the new options?”
No, Gavin, I had not seen the new options. I was busy retrieving placenta.
Of course, I went online that evening, thinking, perhaps naively, that I too could sign up for a few easy extra wins in addition to the soil sampling and worm counting I’d already agreed to sign-up for. Plant a hedge, leave a wildflower strip, maybe earn enough to cover the vet bills from last year’s castration disaster.
But no. In a twist so British it may as well have arrived with a drizzle and a cup of tea, the Sustainable Farming Incentive was abruptly “paused for review,” which is civil servant speak for “binned with great prejudice.” This after the Basic Payment Scheme already withered away like an overused toe-trimmer.
DEFRA’s statement was characteristically opaque: “We remain committed to supporting farmers in their environmental goals, though a new framework will be outlined in due course.”
Due course, my fleece-covered behind. Meanwhile, Gavin’s getting £738 a year for maintaining his pre-existing ponds and roughly £412 for not mowing a patch of bramble behind his slurry pit. I’ve got sixty-seven alpacas and a field margin I planted myself, by hand, during lockdown with nothing but grit, grief and a borrowed seed spreader, and now it’s worth less than a pothole in Slough.
Births, Boluses and Blood Pressure
Of course, no spring rant would be complete without a mention of birthing season. April is when things start to kick off: maiden girls looking vaguely surprised at their own bodies, seasoned dams radiating withering judgement, and every breeder trying to remember where they left the iodine spray.
This year’s theme is “mildly premature and entirely ungrateful.” We’ve had three cria arrive before the 335-day mark, all skinny-legged and strong-lunged, squealing like a rusty swing. They refuse coats, milk only from the left side, and appear determined to die in ways that will emotionally destroy me and financially inconvenience my stud’s reputation.
We’ve tried everything. Colostrum, warm pens, sugar water, even that horrible pink probiotic gel that smells like disappointment. One of the little things tried to bite me. Bit me, who knew!
Meanwhile, the herd matriarchs have resumed their usual April game of “Spit Roulette” during weigh-ins. You think they’re calm, their ears are forward, you reach for the halter, and SPLAT. Green horror with a stink, all over your last clean fleece jumper.
Show Season Panic
Let’s talk about show prep. We’ve focused on the national and several regionals, because I hate myself and enjoy explaining to my accountant that “marketing value” includes driving a pregnant female to Stafford in a horsebox filled with hay, fear, and regret.
The show team, six animals who were, up until recently, feral, are suddenly expected to stand still, walk calmly on a halter, and allow strangers to grope their inner thighs with a smile. The hypocrisy is not lost on me.
We’ve had daily ring training sessions. Some are going well. My knees aren’t what they used to be. Neither is my faith in the phrase “She’s good on the halter at home.”
I cleaned a fleece last week for four hours. I removed hay, burrs, a piece of fencing tape, and a dead beetle. I presented it proudly to my partner, who glanced at it and said, “Bit of VM in the brisket.”
Bit of VM? Bit of VM!? I nearly called the police.
Before alpacas, I dreamed of being one of those ethical farmers, solar-powered, low-input, high-morale, with enough carbon credits to offset an oil spill. But here I am: no BPS, no SFI payments, and a 50+ acre farm that is technically a biodiversity hotspot but officially, according to the current scheme rules, “not relevant.”
I’ve planted hedges. I’ve left margins. I’ve created scrapes, bug hotels, bee habitats, bat boxes, owl perches, and three entire hectares of wildflower meadow that looks like a Claude Monet painting during June and a municipal disaster by October.
But I can’t apply for anything now. Indeed, in the bigger picture, apparently, alpacas are still “non-eligible livestock” under most schemes, which is ironic considering we’ve spent the last decade trying to convince the same government that alpacas are livestock when it comes to TB regulation.
Honestly, the rules shift faster than a suri on a wet slope.
New Breeders, Same Mistakes
Every spring I see a new crop of wide-eyed breeders arriving at shows with freshly trimmed boys named things like “Lord Cinnamon” and “Prince Smoulder.” They ask questions like, “Do you halter train the cria before or after they’ve been weaned?” and I say, “Yes.”
They come dressed in smart gilets and clean boots. They bring spreadsheets. They talk about “genomic potential” and “next-generation fibre.” It’s adorable. I give them two years before they start drinking on Tuesdays.
To be fair, I envy their optimism. They still think the industry runs on logic. They haven’t yet experienced the heartbreak of a £10,000 stud male who throws progeny with fleece like a brillo pad and a temperament like a tax inspector.
Closing Thoughts from the Chaos
And yet… here we are. Still doing it. Still catching crias in the rain, brushing hay out of show fleeces, trimming toenails while cursing the price of needles. Because despite everything, government idiocy, alpaca mutiny, DEFRA’s and the EA’s NVZ spreadsheet-of-doom—there’s something about April.
Maybe it’s the smell of spring grass. Maybe it’s the way the old girls lie in the sun, bellies huge, chewing the cud like queens. Maybe it’s the cria, fragile, foolish, loud, that remind us why we bother.
We don’t do this for subsidies, or trophies, or even fleece (though the ribbons do look good on the website). We do this because something in us is hooked, deeply and irreversibly, on the rhythm of this strange, muddy, glorious life.
So I’ll keep going. Because spit happens. And after twenty years, I’ve learned to wear goggles.