Consistent Quality

Last weekend was a coming out of sorts for the Precocious kids in our show string. When we bought half of their dad from the Forstners at Magical Farms a couple of years ago we obviously had very high hopes for what he could do for us and our breeding program. Having said that though, I think were we to be completely honest history has proven that it can still be rather challenging to get a high percentage of hits (vs. misses) out of the first crop of any given Herdsire’s progeny. Until you learn how to breed a given animal you are to a certain extent only making educated guesses, a good percentage of which you hope are correct. Show results aside — and let’s face it one show is at best a snap shot in time — we were nonetheless really excited by the characteristics we were seeing from his crias as they were being born last year. More importantly we were getting excited by a very high percentage of them. Whatever that boy possessed in his genes it just seemed to work really well with our females. Obviously it’s also nice when the show results that follow don’t make you feel like a complete moron. Of the 6 Precocious kids that entered the ring at the NAAS they managed 5 first places, 1 second place, and 1 Championship (white female).

Overall the tale of the tape for us from the results column in Springfield was very positive as well. Out of 31 animals brought down to the North American CCNF alpacas garnered (including production classes) 1 Color Championship, 4 Reserve Color Championships, 15 first place finishes, 7 second place finishes, 7 third place finishes, 3 4th place finishes, 1 5th place finish, and 1 6th place finish, with only 2 DNPs. All in all just very consistent results against some very stiff competition…