Baby Bells

One of the trends that we’ve really started to see play out here at CCNF over the past 4 or 5 months has been the clustering of mother-daughter (Magdalena along with her adult daughters Johanna and Lilah, Reality and her daughters Nutmeg and Acomani, Sugar Snow and Sugar Drop, etc…) groupings or female sibling pairs birthing out together. Not that any of that is by chance mind you. In almost all cases, these family groups represent the long term strategy of us finding powerful maternal lines and then making a conscious effort over the years to get at least a couple members of those lines on line and in production before selling any females from those families. It’s not rocket science: finds genetic lines that work well and emphasize them in the breeding program. Yes, in the short term it did definitely cost us some money over the years, as the demand for animals of such undeniable quality is still fairly strong, even in the challenging economy the North American alpaca business still finds itself in today. The upside though is that we now find ourselves with a cluster of foundation females whose genetics we not only trust but have come to have a pretty good feel for in terms of which lines they cross well with. And yes, we do ultimately sell members of all of those lines as well — Lilah’s 2nd daughter, Eva Rose, and Sugar Drop’s 1st, Droplet, for instance  — but only after making a reasonable attempt to cover ourselves by having a daughter (or two) joining their dams in the foundation herd.

Another such female cluster are the Sisters Bell we will call them, Bellarina and Bellafina. Both daughters of our famed (and now deceased) female, PPPeruvian Pachelbel, they have continued their dam’s tradition of producing crias that year in and year out are consistently amongst the strongest of their respective birth classes. Of course like many stories, this one has not always been without its challenges. Just two years ago it felt as though poor Bellafina and her kids couldn’t catch a break: on the heels of having lost her newborn Precocious son to a virulent infection at just 4 days of age — you need to understand that he was alive just long enough for us to realize just how spectacular he was, though full disclosure too: the ones that die are almost guaranteed to have their legends grow with each passing day — we then had her yearling daughter, Expialidocious, die in one of the few freak fencing accidents we’ve had here in 15 years…when it rains it pours. For her part, it felt like Bellafina was traveling the world with her own personal rain cloud, Eeyore style. Then last year things started to take a turn for the better. Bred to Elite Legend in the summer of 2010, Bellafina produced a spectacular white son, Bellerephon. Though too young to make the shows last April, he remains in the mix for the fall strings and is in our long term plans regardless. Then late last week Bellafina gave birth to a beautiful female, this time sired by Precocious and a repeat of the (no doubt overly hyped) lost cria of 2010. No pressure little girl, your full brother was just believed to be the best cria of the 2010 birth class. For now we’ll happily settle for alive and healthy even if the fleece on the knee biter is raising an eyebrow or two. In the mean time we will also await this year’s offering from her aunt Bellarina, who coincidentally is birthing out in the same feed group as her younger sister and is due any time as well. Here’s hoping…