Mid-Winter Meanderings

Hello and greetings from the currently snowy and chilly side of the freezing/thawing see-saw that Mother Nature has gifted us here so far in 2019. Applying the jinx here of course but we actually had a period of more sustained cold towards the end of November than we had in late December (oh 2018, we hardly knew thee…) and January thus far but that is par for the course in 21st century New England.

Some random nuggets in no particular order from the inner recesses of an alpaca blogger’s brain while wondering how soon do we need to start training juveniles for the 2019 show season:

• The CCNF Main Barn is a sad sack place this week. That is because the first 30 or so weaners from the 2018 birth class were taken from their dams up at the Arena and brought down to the MB to begin the next stage of their personal growth. As my elders used to say, there’s a whole lot of boot-lipping and thumb sucking going on. And no, my sweet, fuzzy little ones (if you can call a 100 lb., 6 month old “little”) I do not have any milk, nor do Jen or Kimmy. This too shall pass. Meanwhile, the dams up at the Arena, free for the first time in half of a year from the parasites-we-love-most-of-all, are doing just fine once they got over the initial separation. Though our weanlings are admittedly gargantuan by many peoples’ standards, one advantage of waiting until they reach +/- 6 months of age prior to moving them away from their dams, is that their mothers have in almost all cases already weaned their respective babies themselves. There is still separation anxiety though, which I understand…

 

• …having dropped our college sophomore off at the airport last Monday at the end of his winter break. There are planes to fly and CFI certifications to chase in Florida: soar kid. Plus, there are rumors of a March reunion. Just like the dams at the Arena, I too will be fine in short order, even if I did glance into Sam’s bedroom each time I walked past it Tuesday morning.

 

• Our youngest sent his final college application off into cyberspace Monday night. He’s already been accepted into 4 schools so far, so this last one would just increase the options. We shall see. Unlike his older brother, who knew he was accepted at Embry-Riddle shortly after Labor Day of his senior year, Maxy got to run the the full-stress gauntlet of a more conventional (albeit primarily early-action) college application process. Suffice it to say, there were big exhales when those first acceptance letters came through in December.

 

• The first crop of Dreadnought (CCNF Elixir x CCNF Prima Majesty) crias is looking pretty nice. Whenever the breeding misses (white female out of two dark parents with a giant fawn spot: yeah, that’s the ticket we were shooting for!) aren’t feeling all that “missy,” that’s usually a pretty good sign. Barn blinders? Could be but to paraphrase OG alpaca breeder, Greg Mecklem: we’re not as easily impressed as we once were.

 

• That hunt for a new Herdsire might finally be bearing fruit. Stay tuned…that said, we’re never not looking (you know…call us…please!). Adapt, evolve, or wither to irrelevance. Might be the cold outside driving the Darwinian train of thought but 21+ years into this gig, it’s also just a hard truth. Must. Keep. The. Ball. Moving. Sure would be nice if the registry would open up again. Unless of course you feel that breeding elite caliber animals to average ones just because those lesser animals are unrelated, is any kind of recipe for future success. There is no successful livestock breeding program that would ever knowingly follow that model.

 

• Which shows to attend this coming spring? This had been the subject of considerable banter in the Lutz household since last summer and fall, particularly in light of the fact that we will be empty nesting come the spring of 2020, with both boys in college and the reality that our family/farm calendar may well change as a result. Family time will continue to take priority over alpaca events for as long as our kids will have us at least. With that in mind, we will be skipping our beloved North American/Northeast Alpaca Expo in early April. Or I should say, our animals will be passing on the NAAS/NAE. We, Ian and Jen, will nonetheless be there in West Springfield helping Scott, Ann, and Kevin in any way we can: be it color checking, gate-keeping, ring stewarding, or just as glorified errand runners. The plan will be for our spring show team (meaning the 4-legged ones now) to instead attend AOA Nationals in Denver and then get 2 weeks of home cooking (as opposed to 36 hours when we do NAAS) back in VT, before hauling back out to the Futurity in Kansas City. You know: a cross-country haul in the middle of March, what could possibly go wrong? 😉 You heard it here first: I will giddily eat our entry and sponsorships fees for Nationals before driving truck and trailer through the proverbial great blizzard of 2019. Anyway, should be/could be fun…so fingers crossed.

 

• The Golden Sovereign wing of our famed PPeruvian Jesusa/Magdalena/Sovereign maternal line (for those unfamiliar, the latter two were full siblings out of the former) had an unusually good showing last spring, with two of it’s descendants winning both the male and female Judges’ Choice awards at the Futurity. But show results aside, that family group is poised to multiply that impact many times over in 2019. First and foremost, CCNF Sovereign-Legacy (the male JC) will be entering our breeding program where he joins his already working maternal uncle, CCNF Moonraker, whose first crias we are awaiting this summer. Great expectations indeed. Meanwhile, after hoarding daughters (3 currently) for the last 9 years from the reigning matriarch of that Sovereign line, CCNF Moonlight (Golden Sovereign x Snowmass Peruvian Sunstarlight), we teased the possible sale of her youngest little girl this coming year back in December via our Instagram feed. We can now officially announce that CCNF Moonglow (CCNF Dreadnought x CCNF Moonlight) will be consigned to the 2019 Parade of Champions sale! People can buy her or not, it’s really alright with us either way. Females from that greater family line are kind of like MLB pitchers that can paint the corners of the strike zone with 100 MPH heat but also have nasty changeups, and wipe-out sliders to boot: you literally can’t have too many of them.

 

• The AOA Alternative Products committee — of which yours truly is a member —  is hoping to be facilitating a presentation and round table discussion titled An Introduction to Terminal Markets at the 2019 AOA Natural Fiber Extravaganza in Nashville, TN this coming July. In the absence of federal USDA inspection for alpaca meat, the regulatory landscape varies greatly depending on which state an alpaca farmer/rancher/producer is located in. The hope is that through some story sharing from producers from different parts of the country, the seminar can shed some light, offer some dos and don’ts, and dispel a lot of the misinformation that is out there in the ether. Can you name a single commercially successful natural fiber industry in the world that doesn’t have terminal markets (meat & hides) as a component? I cannot. The math is really quite simple. While it doesn’t mean that everyone here in the US has to buy in and participate if it makes them uncomfortable, terminal markets have to be part of the future for a viable and mature US alpaca industry (see bullet point #5, 3rd sentence).

 

Stay warm everyone, talk soon!

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