CCNF results from the AOBA National Fleece Show
I have to say that not personally being in Denver, Colorado this past May for the AOBA National Conference and Show was rather disappointing! It wasn’t because I loved the idea of driving 20+ hours with a trailer full of alpacas to the Rocky Mountain West, something which in fact was never in the cards. It’s just an old running family joke that a Lutz is perpetually terrified that they might be missing out on a good time and frankly, we’ve also become rather attached to Denver over the years.
The plan from the beginning though was to just enter fleeces into the fleece show, with some possibility that we would get to fly out and enjoy the festivities as well. For we had done just that the last time that Nationals were held in Denver in 2011, dropping fleeces off at the venue, and then going on a bit of a sight seeing tour down into the four corners region for a couple of days. It remains perhaps my single most enjoyable show experience — worth noting I suppose that it didn’t involve walking around a show ring — in 16 years of doing this whole gig. Of course not only is Denver our second favorite show city in the entire country (that title is currently held by Kansas City, MO) but we also have considerable history there, having attended our first ever AOBA conference right in the middle of downtown way back in 1996, before we had even purchased our first alpacas.
Regardless of all that though, the end-of-school-year activities for our kids, combined with the obvious expenses of travel, meant that we just couldn’t justify it this time around, much as we might have been itching to go. Thankfully, we were however able to enter several fleeces in the fleece show and ship them out. Though AOBA Nationals has never exactly been known for its affordability, the prestige of the show itself has always made the expense worthwhile in our minds. For lest we forget, showing — whether halter or fleece — is at its essence, a form of marketing.
This show for us marked the debut of fleeces that were shorn off of our animals in early May of this year. Jen spent many days immediately after shearing frantically skirting show fleeces for Denver and as our results below bare out, her time was well spent. In addition to the 4 Championships and 1 Reserve which our animals won, CCNF was also awarded the Heirloom Fleece Cup (see picture at left) as the top point getter in the entire huacaya fleece show! We were psyched!
Of special note was the continued recognition that two of our Precocious sons, Invictus and Bellagio received, winning their respective color groups. There was also the “arrival” of sorts of our Matrix Majesty kids, most prominently in the forms of our juveniles, Magistrate whose dam, Reality, has been a lynchpin in our colored breeding program for years and his paternal sister Honeysuckle, a member of the same powerful maternal line that produced Smoke Ring and Annabeth (Honeysuckle’s maternal uncle and aunt respectively). Lastly, there was the latest entry in one of my favorite ongoing story lines here in our breeding program: little Tessora, whose granddam of the same name we purchased from Lynn and Tom Costner of Sunny Mesa Alpacas years ago, winning her color group as well and in so doing, stating effusively that that maternal line is very much here to stay!
Anyway, without further fanfare I give you CCNF’s 1sts, Championships, and Reserve Championships from the AOBA National Fleece Show:
CCNF Yucatan – 1st Place Beige Yearling Male Huacaya
Xanadu P. Cadenza – 1st Place White Mature Female Huacaya
CCNF Centurion – 1st Place White Juvenile Male Huacaya
CCNF Magistrate – 1st Place Dark/Medium Brown Juvenile Male Huacaya
CCNF Magistrate – Champion Brown Huacaya Male
CCNF Defiance – 1st Place White Yearling Huacaya Male
CCNF Invictus – 1st Place Light Fawn/Beige 2 Year Old+ Huacaya Male
CCNF Invictus – Champion Light Male Huacaya
CCNF Bellagio – 1st Place White 2 Year Old+ Huacaya Male
CCNF Bellagio – Champion White Huacaya Male
CCNF Tessora – 1st Place White Juvenile Huacaya Female
CCNF Tessora – Champion White Huacaya Female
Snowmass Victorian Majesty – 1st Place Light Brown 2 Year Old+ Huacaya Female
TGF Let Freedom Reign – 1st Place Juvenile Dark/Light Brown Huacaya Female
CCNF Honeysuckle – 1st Place Light Fawn Juvenile Huacaya Female
CCNF Honeysuckle – Reserve Champion Light Huacaya Female
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