A Statement of Intent, Part #1: TKO’s King of the Ladies

This is the story, seen from Cas-Cad-Nac’s perspective, of how a superlative young Herdsire came to join our ranks. For the other side of the same story, one that is admittedly missing the elements of darkness and loss, check out Scott Young’s excellent narrative here.

When we lost our beloved and iconic Herdsire, SuperNova, this past July it was not a surprise. We had known since last winter when we ran him to the Cornell Veterinary Hospital for emergency intestinal surgery that he was living on borrowed time. For during that surgery we discovered that in addition to the cancerous length of intestine which was ultimately removed, his abdomen was riddled with many other smaller tumors as well. It was really just a question of how long he could hold out. We were not going to subject him to repeated surgeries each time he showed abdominal discomfort for the rest of his life.  It became a question of quality of life rather than quantity of life.  Though Novy was able to heal enough to do some limited breeding for us this past spring (his final breeding and the resulting pregnancy was achieved just 2 weeks before he passed in fact) we knew going into the 2010 season that we were about to take a huge strategic hit with his loss. Though we had been able to build up a nice little reserve of his daughters over time, we had sold two of his best sons, Boss-A-Nova and Talon, over the past few years and another, Amoror, had long been slated to be our headlining male at the 2010 National Elite sale. We were facing a real pickle of a situation, at least temporarily until someone could grow up (maybe even someone still unborn even) and take their sire’s place. Admittedly a tall order. There was possibly another option though. Some 5 hours to the west of us at the farm of our good friends Scott and Ann Young there was a little genetic ark that we had been keeping an eye on, at least with our peripheral vision…

Go back seven years to 2003 and Hilltop Alpacas’ acquisition of a female from us named Snowmass Bell, a full Accoyo girl out of the legendary imported female, PPPeruvian Pachelbel. We had sold Bell to the Youngs (in actuality to TKO, Tyler and Kelsey Young’s farm within a farm) bred to SuperNova at the time, a combination that resulted in a female cria Kelsey (who woulda thought?) decided to name Cinderella. A couple of years later Scott and Ann elected to breed Cinderella with our other home-grown icon, having secured one of the rare outside breedings to Archangel. Lightning struck. That resulting meld of Pachelbel, Snowmaster, SuperNova, and Archangel produced a male. As it turned out, perhaps the best male any of those lines has ever made. And if you know your recent history, that’s quite a statement. I still have memories of Scott calling me on the phone that year all amped up as their little fart named after an Extreme song (our good friend and Archangel’s co owner at the time, Pat Badger, is Extreme’s bassist) started to develop…

“Dude! You’ve got to see this guy! I grabbed him the other day and his fleece is freakin’ killer!” Vintage stuff from Scott. Well as it turned out, the Big Guy spoke the truth. Starting with the CABO show in February of 2009, Hilltop Alpacas and TKO would go on a run with their new boy that if you knew that family…well it just had to make you smile. The good guys do win some times, you know? Over the course of his show career King of the Ladies was classed as a beige/light at some shows and later on as a white at others. Not that it mattered: he won anyway. As the fall of ’09 came and went he closed out his first full show season by winning not just his color group but also the Judge’s Choice at that year’s Empire show.

As their friends we were tickled for the Youngs, though admittedly at that moment in October of 2009 we were just psyched that we had played some part in making it all happen. Our only thought looking forward at that time was the prospect of making Kinger part of his father’s future Get-of-Sire entries. Though we drooled over him like most people who saw that yearling male rounding into form, that was as far as it went.

Our perspective would of course all change though some months later with the horrible news of SuperNova’s cancer diagnosis.  King of the Ladies went from being the gloriously excellent young Herdsire owned by our friends, though really only admired from a distance, to being something potentially much more important to CCNF than just a genetic descendant we were proud of.  As February led to March, and then April with SuperNova suffering occasional bouts of what would have looked like colic to the unknowing eye, we approached the Youngs about acquiring half of their young rockstar male. We figured that even if we were wrong (“oh, please let us be wrong!”) and SuperNova had years instead of months, Kinger would make for a very nice insurance plan.

Meanwhile, drama at Cas-Cad-Nac aside, King of the Ladies came out of the blocks in 2010 with a jolt.  If anything he looked more impressive just shy of his second birthday than he had the previous fall. He won his color championship and the Judge’s Choice awards at both CABO and the North American Show. Perhaps 2009 wasn’t a fluke, huh? Of course winning on the east coast is very nice, don’t get me wrong. The North American, in particular, has built up a reputation over the years for having very stiff competition. Having said that though: those in the know understand that there is only one show in this country that stands apart in the calibre of animals that are entered there…

Months earlier, when we were still just viewing ourselves as Kinger’s extended family, we (the “we” that included our road warrior buddy and Archangel’s new co owner, Ryen Munro) had agreed to haul him out to the Futurity in OKC for the Youngs. That is after all a heck of a long drive for one animal, no matter how nice he is. Though we didn’t have enough other Archangel kids with us in our show string for the old man to have anything but an outside shot at playing the role of spoiler in Herdsire of the Year honors, we still felt that King of the Ladies could only help our cause.  Also quite frankly we’re just not that stupid: win or lose there are far worse things than being seen with an animal like that on the other end of the lead line. As the picture at the bottom of the page shows, King of the Ladies ended his show career the same way he began it: by winning his color championship (there was no JC at the 2010 Futurity, BTW), though this time at the toughest show in the country. Though the Young’s had finally gotten sick of hearing from me (“give us a price already!”) some 7 to 10 days prior to that historic victory and had given in, that win was completely theirs and deservedly so. We just got to go along for the ride, in my case literally. Let the record show: a farm from upstate NY with a herd of 75 alpacas took on the country’s toughest competition from herds and breeding programs that dwarf them several times over and won. Quality over quantity.

That was then, this is now. The spring show season and the Futurity feels like it happened an age ago. I still start to chuckle when I consider the fact that after taking runs at the white classes at the Futurity for years, we ended up having to buy back into our own program’s genetics to have part of an animal that finally won the big one there. Figures, right? In any case we are eternally grateful to Scott and Anne and the whole Young clan for agreeing to part with half of their boy. It is the nature of these things of course, that we will now have to wait another 10 months or so before we find out what King of the Ladies is truly made of. He is certainly being given ample opportunities to show us. I was down at the stud barn the other day collecting boys for a breeding run (um, drive actually) up to the arena and there was Kinger just hanging out chewing his cud with his dad and grandfather (Legacy Gold). Three generations of undeniable awesomeness side by side, quite a sight. The fact that what attracted us to him was his non-Legacy, SuperNova blood from his dam’s side will always be understandably lost anyone who didn’t know Novy and what he meant to this breeding program. But we know exactly what SuperNova was and we have pretty good hunch about his grandkid too. “To you from failing hands we throw The torch; be yours to hold it high…” Geez, no pressure kid…