A final gift

After making us sweat for several weeks Saphira finally had her first cria yesterday afternoon. It was the sort of uneventful maiden birth that makes you think she’d always known how to do that. “Thanks for watching but I’ve really got things all under control here folks!” Her 11 month due date, even before which she was already in the expectant mommy group at the Arena, was way back on June 9th. We have learned over the years though that females will have their babies when they are good and ready. Yes, running close to a year’s gestation can at times mean something is amiss with a pregnancy. It can also mean absolutely nothing though and as often as not all turns out fine.

Yesterday’s strapping white (possibly beige) boy was loaded with extra significance for us on two counts. First off, Saphira is one of three adult sisters whose dam, Tessora, we lost last month to a virulent inner ear infection. It’s impossible to overstate the importance we place on that maternal line in our breeding program. It’s only member to have left us so far since we first brought Tess into the fold almost six years ago was Saphira’s older brother Talon, who now stands at stud at Classical MileEnd Alpacas in the UK. Prior to yesterday the youngest member of that clan was our little fleece ball and Tessora’s final cria, Tenacious, who was the Reserve Champion White Male at the AOBA National Fleece Show. Needless to say that line has the goods.

Secondly and perhaps more importantly, the young boy born yesterday was also the last cria sired by SuperNova that will ever be born as we lost his dad last summer just a few weeks after the breeding that produced him. From a strategic standpoint that match of sire and dam was following a well worn path for us: we didn’t just breed Saphira to SuperNova because we knew he didn’t have long to live. Given the success of Tessora’s past matches with SuperNova — both Talon and full sibling Capella were Novy kids — it only made sense for us to take Tess’s middle daughter, Saphira (whose sire is Messiah), and breed her to SuperNova as well. While I will grant that all we know about her cria at the moment is that he’s male, white, and strong it’s still not a bad starting place. We will watch him develop with interest.