Colourbration Day Two

The things you do on tour…

Eat way too much junk food, stay in odd places, drink too much red wine, find yourself watching an old episode of thunderbirds at some unearthly hour of the morning and, best of all, take embarrassing photos of leading alpaca breeders for future blackmail purposes…

But enough of that, back to the show.

A good day yesterday, a first and a fourth with our first two animals.

First up today was James with Illustrious, a light fawn junior that I’m really excited about

A tough class with some good competition and….. Drum Roll…. A first! A great result and she’s probably booked herself a ticket to the nationals in October.

Next, a bit of light relief. I blogged earlier in the year about our first appaloosa. A complete surprise to us all when he arrived from a line that is solid on both sides.

Well, spotties are a growing thing – they’re getting more and more popular and this little boy has got a very fine and well defined fleece, so, why not…

Another first! This is getting silly.

Interesting though that the line-up for the 'fancy' championship, which, of course, was won by Ambersun Jag, were all spotties…

Expect another blog about him when it comes to shearing time – I’m really looking forward to seeing what’s there when his fleece comes off.

Colourbration – Day One, Part Two

First success!

OK, it’s a second place, but it’s a second place to the animal that went on to take the championship, so I’ll happily bank that.

Cassia is another one from our suri experiment, an experiment that is, so far, going very well. Colin, our suri sire, is throwing some quite outstanding offspring. We nearly pulled her from the show at the last minute – she was that muddy and messy, certainly far from show condition. But the girl did good.

Colourbration – Day One

For us, Victorian Colourbration is, second only to the National Show, one of the year’s most important events. It has almost become the colour breeders’ national.

Sadly, we’ve only brought a small, wet and muddy team this year but hopefully they won’t disgrace us too much and the judges will be able to make allowances for the paddock conditions.

Congratulations to the organisers, a well laid out shed, good facilities and the bacon sandwich to start the day was spot-on (very important at any show!)

More later

Our first fleece collection day in South Australia

One of those rare things – a video blog!

I don’t think that Hollywood needs to be afraid just yet….

Unsung heroes…

Every reasonable sized herd has them. Those animals that, objectively, are nothing special but are alpacas that their owners wouldn’t part with for anything. It could be an older girl who can always spare a drink for a baby whose own mother is struggling with feeding, it may be the very tame animal who will halter train others (more about that in future post) or, as in this case, it might be the ‘utility’ wether that does all the odd jobs.

Allow me to introduce you to Prospero…

On any sane farm, Prospie would have been sold off as a pet or sheep guard long ago, certainly, we could have moved him on many times over. But, he was our very first baby on the property, so he’s a special case.

He’s had his moments of fame – he was a very pretty cria. He featured in our earliest advertising:

A picture of him (heavily Photoshopped) has even won a few prizes:

But there was no getting away from the fact that he was never going to make it as a show and stud boy and was going to have to face the unkindest cut of all.

Today, he’s a big, ugly wether. But we’d not be without him. Got some weanlings missing their mum and in need of mentoring and company? Prospero. Need an animal to move in with the chickens because there’s a fox around? Prospero. Need a companion for a sick animal? Guess who. And, this week, when we needed a donor for a really sick animal that needed an urgent blood transfusion, it was Prospie who parted with a litre and a half of the red stuff over three days (although I don’t think he likes the bald patch on his neck).

So, here’s to you Prospero and to all the other unsung heroes in herds around the world. You may never win a broad ribbon at a show, but you’re champions as far as we’re concerned.

School Visits

These days we find frequently find ourselves taking the alpacas on days out to visit schools and other community centres.

Of course, this is all good karma but, and here’s the big secret (don’t tell other breeders or they’ll all be doing it) it’s also great fun!

Alpacas are such natural crowd pleasers, you’re always guaranteed of getting an appreciative audience.

This week saw the roadshow at Narracoorte Primary School.

Sarah took three of the boys, a suri and two huacayas, all very wet, down to introduce them to the youngsters.

  We usually  follow the same format, a quick talk followed by an opportunity to get up close to the animals. It always goes down well and we leave the school with some handouts and fleece samples to use in project work.  A good time is had by all.

Shameless advertising

The truck’s back from the signmaker’s

Tyson and the guys from DzignFX in Adelaide have done a great job.