A deal that went horribly, terribly right.

It was some five and a half years ago as I sat in my basement office searching the internet for new light colored females to add to our foundation herd that we came across Tessora. Her discovery came after several frustrating days of calling up breeders that had females listed, often times for exorbitant prices even, only to be told that they were in fact not really for sale. That quickly became a pet peeve of mine: don’t put a price on an animal if it’s not in fact for sale! It is really not that difficult a concept to grasp. Lost on many of those people was the fact that we weren’t even calling up looking for a deal: we were more than happy to pay full price for their animals, they just weren’t willing to sell.

Then, finally, there was Tess. Our friend Pat Badger was the one who actually spotted her as he was was in the market at that time himself for a colored female. It just so happened that Lynn and Tom Costner of Sunny Mesa Alpacas had one of each for sale that fit our collective bill perfectly: Tessora, who was white and her paternal sister, Tara, who was black. It must be said that Lynn was hesitant to sell both herself — something which hindsight being 20/20 I completely understand — though we (CCNF and Alpaca Grove) had something with which we could sweeten the pot too. In the end after many weeks of gently cajoling Lynn, we all ended up happily paying Sunny Mesa’s full asking prices for both females plus we offered the Costner’s a free breeding to Archangel whom we co owned at that time with the Badgers. Though Arch was not yet closed for outside breedings at that point in his life, he was nonetheless normally available only to those existing clients of ours who were willing to pay the rather steep stud fee of $7,500. From our perspective here at CCNF, the whole thing just felt like a really fair deal all around: CCNF and AG paid high but completely fair money for a couple of high end females that were unrelated to rest of our respective herds and Sunny Mesa got access to some genetics they wouldn’t otherwise of had. Though we have certainly overpaid for some animals over the years (as they say in elementary school, “no take backs!”), we have remained proponents of the belief that in the end you must always give something to get something and boy did we ever get something with that one.

Tessora’s crias since she has come here have all been models of consistency and quality. Not only have we never even considered selling any of her daughters that were born here (Saphira and younger sister Capella) but when given the chance a couple of years back to pick up her first born daughter Krystal — again from Sunny Mesa — it was really a no-brainer. Her SuperNova son, Talon (Capella’s full sibling), was our auction headliner at the 2009 National Elite sale and now stands at stud in the UK. Those crias were in some ways perhaps just the beginning though. Last summer, having been bred to Precocious, Tessora gave us her most recent gift: a dynamic little teddy bear of a male we named Tenacious. Though there is a long way to go, we feel as though the upside on Tenacious is very high and he is a young male for whom we have big plans indeed. How highly do we rate him? He is one of those special youngsters for whom we were picking out potential breeding matches before he was even weaned from his dam last winter. Yes, yes…I know we need to get out more and get a life but it’s how the brain of an alpaca breeder functions.

As for Tenacious’ maternal line, they are all plugging along just fine in 2011 with each of them already pregnant and due this season or breeding in an attempt to spread the genetic wealth just that much more. Tessora herself is bred to Elite Legend, eldest daughter Krystal is bred to Precocious (an attempt at Tenacious 2.0), Saphira, a Messiah daughter, is bred to SuperNova (his last confirmed pregnancy before passing away last year, riffing on Talon/Capella), and youngest sister Capella having just retired from the show circuit herself is currently being bred to Matrix Majesty. We’re in pretty good shape where that family is concerned!

Well that’s all well and good but how did Sunny Mesa do in the end from that original deal? A bit of time passed and in the summer of 2007 the Costners sent us a beautiful fawn female named Butterfly to make use of the Archangel breeding that they had coming to them. The resulting cria from that union, born in June of 2008, they named Ares (Sunny Mesa’s Ares De Archangel for you ARIphiles). Though I remember hearing mention of “some Archangel kid” from a friend of ours that went to one of the western shows in the late winter of 2009, we in fact didn’t get to lay our eyes or hands on Ares in person until last fall at the 2010 National Elite in Oklahoma. Like many of his paternal siblings it perhaps took him maturing a bit more for one to start to truly appreciate what he was all about. He had already been incredibly dense and uniform throughout his fleece as a juvenile, all on a beautifully conformed frame.  As a two year old though the retained/lingering fineness of his sire was really starting to come into play. My first thought upon seeing him last year was in fact that of the many sons Archangel had sired, Ares was probably second only to King of the Ladies. Yes, for those keeping score at home it meant that Arch’s two best sons to date were both born away from CCNF. How about that? Well as much as I had liked Ares last November, it seems that he was really just entering his prime then. Though we missed seeing it with our own eyes, upon returning from Denver last week I got the sort of email from Lynn Costner that would make any alpaca breeder smile: Ares had won the Reserve White Male Championship at the national show! A picture as they say is worth a thousand words though congratulations just the same to the Costners and to Ares’ co owners Jennifer and Richard Babcock of Las Bonitas Alpaca Ranch!

If the original deal to bring Tessora here to CCNF felt like a good one way back when, it somehow just keeps getting better with the passage of time. The genetic ripple effect seems to continually expand. Some deals just work out.