Show Prep 101, Part 1

It has occurred to me lately that given the time of year it would be good to post something dealing with the topic of show preparation. That is after all, in one form or another, what most of our late winters and early springs have been taken up with for the past eleven years (we didn’t show animals for the first couple of years we had the farm). Like everyone we are always still learning new things but on balance the whole experience of signing up for shows, training animals, packing the trailer — an art form when you’ll be on the road for more than a week — and showing itself is really fairly old hat at this point.

Though we of course have a fall show season as well, the reality is that it is primarily the months of March, April, and May when most of the action and most of the long-hauls (hello Utah, OKC, and Nebraska) take place. Though there is the occasional juvenile animal that doesn’t make the cut onto the spring show roster because they are too young but does end up going out the following autumn, for the most part 90% of our show prep for new string members is taking place right now as I have mentioned ad nauseam over the past several days. That to me makes March a more relevant time to speak to this issue than say September when most of the critters are by then, relatively speaking, wily old veterans of the ring.  As I was considering this all I also remembered that I had in fact already written such a piece for the old hardcopy version of the newsletter in the summer and fall issues of 2006. Rather than redesign the wheel what appears below is a slightly revised and updated version of the first of those two pieces. The upside this time around is that rather than waiting 3 months to post part 2, I will be able to put it out there in just a day or two from now. Obviously what follows is aimed more at new folks who are just starting out or going to their first ever show. Without further ado: Show Prep 101, Part 1…

We were there once: newbie alpaca breeders at our first show. I have to say that the most enduring memory of arriving at the 1999 Big E is the feeling of dread I felt in my stomach that day. There we were at our first major public event surrounded by hundreds of other alpacas (and back then llamas too) and a whole myriad of other farms, most of whom we’d never heard of. All of a sudden the alpaca business and our wider community was no longer an abstraction. Of course the biggest demons we had to defeat at that event were the ones in our heads. In the end it really wasn’t all that bad: we made both of our classes, neither of our animals kicked the judge, and we even won a ribbon.

A lot has changed since then.  Not the least of which is the fact that we now often have 15 to 30 animals in tow instead of 2, to say nothing of the trailer that looks like a small house moving down the road versus loading 2 females into the back of our truck! Nowadays the show circuit for us is really just a chance to get together with our friends, do some networking with other breeders, and in between we grab alpacas and go walk in circles. I will grant that I have the organizational, almost task master, talents of my wife Jennifer to thank for the smoothness with which our show experiences are run. Certainly if you’ve ever seen her in the ring frantically gesticulating to someone outside, as in “go get so-and-so they’re due in ring 2 right now!” that was probably me she was directing her irritation at. The trick to diminishing the stress load when going to shows of course is to be prepared and know what to expect to the best of your ability keeping in mind that sometimes things can happen that are out of your control (three show rings, three animals due in their respective rings at the same time, and only two handlers). It’s at times like that of course that you find out who your friends really are (hello Pat, Anne, and Scott!). How does one even get to that point though?  The subject of show preparation is so broad that we will cover it in two parts.  In this first part we’ll focus on the stuff that goes on at home with shearing, training, and housing long before you load your trailer and head for your first show. In the next part, we’ll delve into organizational ideas that apply more to us humans than the alpacas themselves.

IT STARTS AT HOME

So much of what we accomplish at shows is made possible by the steps we take long before we leave the cozy confines of CCNF. As someone that use to race sailboats, a sport where preparation and teamwork are an absolute must, I am often reminded of the book that famed America’s Cup skipper Dennis Conner wrote, No Excuse To Lose. I know its title sounds rather unforgiving but really its basic axiom was simply that you should do everything in your power before you enter any given competition to give yourself the best chance at success. Whatever you do, just don’t beat yourself. At the very least it’s certainly something to shoot for.

For us it all starts with preparation and the way the animals are kept and trained at home. For the sake of this article let’s just assume that we are talking about a group of five alpacas born in July and use them as a theoretical example.  Our show preparation really begins on the day we first shear those alpacas as crias.  For us that generally happens nowadays around 30 days of age.  We slick shear the neck and body of all of our summer crias, tapering in the heads and the legs so that the look of each alpaca flows.  Under current AOBA show rules you are not allowed to touch the animal later on other than to trim up the head and cut off any nasty poop tags hanging from the tail (as a courtesy to judges if nothing else). For this reason it is vitally important that you get the animal sheared correctly the first time. If you’re not comfortable doing it yourself — and most beginning breeders are justifiably not — then find a shearer who knows what they are doing and hire them to do it for you. It could be the best $30 you spend all year. A couple of big dos and don’ts on cria shearing (in case it’s not obvious by the way, this cria shearing stuff applies to huacayas only): 1. DO shear your crias as you would your adults.  The only major exception to this rule is that we leave the tails alone as most dams are indentifying their crias by scent at that age and shearing off the tail fiber can increase the likelihood of rejection by the dam when you return the cria to her. Regardless, we always put the cria back into a 10 x 10 bonding pen with its mother immediately after shearing and do not let them out again until we can see the baby has been fully accepted by its mother and allowed to nurse; 2. DO NOT “tip” shear your crias using a spacer, it doesn’t work and they end up looking stupid (see 1.). 3. DO NOT shear off the cria’s cheek fiber (if they have any) as it will take a lot longer to come back than the fleece on the torso and neck. Certainly our hypothetical group of 5 alpacas would not have their facial fiber back by the time they hit the show circuit the following spring. Once an animal comes off of the show roster and enters the production herd you can take the cheeks down all you want. A great looking full head is an asset in the show ring though, so take care of it while the animal is still showing!

For the next five to six months our five hypothetical show critters will still be living with and nursing off of their mothers. Though in some cases it is possible to do some initial halter and lead work with them during this period we’ve found that the easiest time to train our show animals is soon after weaning, between six and seven months of age. I wont go into any great detail on training techniques (a subject on which there are literally volumes already written) other than to say that we have had very good results running our show animals through some rudimentary obstacle courses as a way to desensitize them even further once they already have down the basics of walking on a slack lead and standing. It doesn’t even have to be something you set up: in our case we use our kid’s swing set. I know it may sound a little silly but if our young show animals will follow us under the slide, around the tire swing, and back under the monkey bars then walking in a circle and posing for the judge for 20 minutes will be a relative snap. It’s all just a trust building exercise. For those that are brand new to the alpaca world I can’t say enough about the value of learning to train your own animals from scratch. It’s not only good for show animals either, you can use the same techniques to chill out that crotchety old import you just bought too. As mentioned above there are a whole host of materials out there in both written and video format dealing with the the topic of alpaca training. Though some of the training techniques vary somewhat in how they approach the alpacas themselves philosophically, I’ve found it interesting to note that many of the different “schools” have drifted closer to each other in recent years. If you want to learn alpaca training techniques quickly, spend the money to go to one of the many 2 or 3 day training workshops that are offered out there. Your alpacas will thank you!

Throughout this period of time leading up to the spring shows, we also need to consider how our animals are housed and the long term effect that it’s going to have on the condition of their fleeces.  Fleece cleanliness starts at the farm level and though bringing your alpacas to the show in “paddock condition” is what the show rules call for, that doesn’t mean we want their fiber dusty, filled with hay chaff, or smeared with manure on the outside.  If you are lucky enough to live in a part of the world where you can have pasture most of the year then you are ahead of the game. There is nothing quite like a paddock of green grass to keep a show animal looking sharp. Unfortunately, for many of us our pastures are a lovely cocktail of dead leaves and mud in February, March, and much of April, just as we’re getting ready to hit the road for the spring circuit. We’ve found that a combination of heavily bedded pens inside our barns (we use a shredded cardboard bedding) and sand in our corrals outside (others have used a pea stone in their corrals with good results too) to be the best way of getting through that time of the year, even keeping the animals off of the pastures completely if needed until the grass has truly awoken from its winter slumber, or at the very least until the paddock has dried out some. It’s one thing to pick the odd pieces of hay chaff and some stray poop beans off of your show critters just before heading into the ring itself but if an animal has either a serious amount of dust in their fleece (been there, done that) or say a giant manure smear down one of their rear legs (done that too) you have put yourself at a considerable disadvantage before you even walk into the show ring.  The bottom line is that clean pens, corrals, and pastures lead to clean alpacas and clean fleeces. There are any number of different ways to go about it and a myriad of bedding/stall mat/sand/stone combinations that could work depending greatly on the layout of your barn(s) and pastures: the trick is finding the one that works for you!

So our five young juvenile animals have been weaned and halter trained and are ready to be presented to the alpaca world at large. Next time we’ll talk about organizational issues from the logistics of what to bring with you, loading our trailer, and some things you can do to make it all run smoother once you arrive at the show venue itself.