First of 2009

Well, I posted over a week ago now that we were expecting our first baby of the year any moment. It turned out that it was just one of those alpaca false alarms. We expect them, but still they catch us out. Some girls just seem to like to have a rehearsal 10 days or so before the event.

So, born at about 10:30 this morning at a chunky 8.3 kilos is the result of our little breeding experiment.

If you read the earlier blog entry you'll remember that Juno, the mum, is a pet rather than part of our breeding program. On the one hand, she's cute and affectionate, on the other, while she's classified as black under our regulations because her saddle is solid black, she has a white face and socks, odd patches of brown and even a small circle of slate-grey on her neck. The only way to get any crimp in her fleece would be to plug her into the mains. I half expected any offspring to have a hump...

So...

Some time ago we did some work for a South Australian suri breeder. Payment was a mating to one of their animals. Mundawora Zarion is a stunning alpaca. he's won a huge number of broad ribbons and the trophy cabinet is overflowing.

In for a penny, in for a pound as they say...

What we have today is positive proof that, when it comes to matings - you get what you pay for. Here we have probably one of the poorest quality females in the country, yet, to an outstanding sire, she's produced what is really a quite good, dark fawn F1 suri.

He's a great colour and is beginning to pencil nicely. Unfortunately of course, as an F1 male, he's destined to be a pet for some lucky owner, but at the moment we're more than happy with the result.