Getting the band back together one last time.

As of this past weekend, virtually all of the animals that are going to be a part of our spring show strings over the next month and a half were together in one place, at the CCNF Main Barn. Specifically, all of the yearling females as well as any of the latest weaners that will be joining our little jaunt to Harrisburg, PA next week to the National show, were all brought down from the Arena where they had previously been housed. It did require a wee bit of farm management jujitsu, with a group of less hormonal (non-show) yearling males temporarily being moved up to the Arena — a first since that barn was built in 2003 for the sole purpose of housing only our female herd — in order to open up some extra space at the MB, which will again begin to serve as the quarantine/transient facility, as animals come and go from the farm between now and mid-April. The early start to our show season this year as well the size and ages of the string going with us to Pennsylvania next week — an almost even split between yearlings and juveniles but completely devoid of adults this time around — just meant that we had to readjust the farm’s layout some in the run-up this time around. It’s all good.

Having the show animals all down at the Main Barn ensures that the critters and their fleeces get to go outside and roll in the snow, hopefully working some of the dust out of their fiber that they had gathered at the upper barn. The Arena has unfortunately had its drylot closed off, with animals confined to the indoor pens and the outside corrals (read: chaffy hay and sand), since the big blizzard that hit us in mid February. With thousands of pounds of snow and ice hanging off of the shed roofs up there, it just hasn’t been worth the risk letting any of them out. Dead, frozen alpacas tend not to show, breed, or sell so well. So quite aside from the animal welfare question of wanting our youngsters to be housed in a place where they can get out and run and play more, chances are that their fleeces will look a whole lot better too! In fact its amazing to see some of them transform after less than a week down in their new digs. Plus, there is nothing quite as cathartic as a good group-wide pronk to help with some of the mommy-separation anxiety for the new weanlings. And now they have the leg room to do just that.

For the vast majority of our yearling show girls, these next three shows (Nationals, NAAS, Futurity) will represent their final times out representing our breeding program in competition. Showing, particularly for females, is generally a young animal’s game. By the time our top females reach 18 to 24 months of age, they quite frankly have more important things to do than win ribbons and trophies, as wonderful as those might be. Though some of the current crop of yearling females either are already listed for sale or will be appearing in auctions in the months ahead, the vast majority of the females from the birth class of 2012 will in fact be reabsorbed into our foundation herd and put into production, hopefully before the end of July, all things being equal. Though there is the odd female in that group sired by someone else (Pachelbel and Daliance for instance, both Champions sired by Precocious and Sub-Zero respectively), the majority of them were sired by either Matrix Majesty or Elite Legend in his penultimate go-round here. To say that we have long-term strategic plans for those girls would be an understatement. Breeding some of the best daughters those two ever made for this program to the likes of Elixir, Sub-Zero, Invictus, Archangel, King of the Ladies, or Kahuna is a mouthwatering prospect. Filling out the 2014 breeding chart for the female herd here will be an interesting exercise in its own right!

In the mean time, final training preparations are underway for Nationals and as I write this Jen and Kim literally have the final two weaners that are joining that string in the round pens getting them chilled out and ready for showing. One of those is the first cria, Swahili, out of our beloved black Cameron daughter, Tanzania. Hopefully she’s a quick study like her mama was! We shall see.

Everybody in the northern part of the country have their trailers out of the snowbank yet?

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