Wayfarer’s first…with a grey twist!

I love it when crias come out just the way that we had ordered them. Amongst other things, it helps to further promote the mythology that we know exactly what it is we are doing here!

In this particular case, the baby in question was to be the 2nd born cria of our lovely rose grey Champion female, Annabeth. See, we don’t have any real magic formula for our breeding program. The “secret” of whatever success we have achieved over time, is simply that we have found several powerful family lines over the years that seem to play well off of each other. Much of what we do here when we make our breeding decisions simply bares those histories in mind. Though there is always — and there ultimately must be — some element of experimentation and improvisation, generally speaking, we find genetic matches that work and then riff off of them again and again, until we can riff no more. Histograms and EPD reports are all well and good but they are at best a tool to be used as part of the decision making process, not an all-encompassing answer to all of one’s alpaca breeding questions. Plus, if two alpacas have great fiber numbers and wonderful EPDs but come from family lines that don’t mesh well together (we’ve got those too), then those reports are…well, at least you can use the paper they’re printed on for starting a perfectly nice camp fire? Ok, mini-rant over.

In any case, with Annabeth’s dam, Marian (who is rose grey), having produced her excellent maternal brother Smoke Ring (likewise rose grey) a few years ago when bred to CCNF Royal Ring of Fire (who is dark fawn), we felt that it only made sense last year to riff on that genetic match again. Particularly with the ascendance of our young Ringo son, CCNF Wayfarer, who also carries in him the additional genetic mojo of his maternal grandparents Legacy Gold and Reality.

So it was that on Sunday, as we were busy dropping the boys off into the ever capable hands of the Young family at Camp Hilltop for a 2 week sojourn, that Annabeth gave birth to a gorgeous little rose grey girl sired by Wayfarer! We have always freely admitted that we don’t consider ourselves breeders of grey alpacas, we gladly cede that space to those who really do know what they are doing when speaking about grey genetics and breeding theory (talkin’ about you Padgetts!). In fact with Smoke Ring having gone off to Arrow Acres Farm in NJ to do his Herdsire thing and carry forth the family name, Annabeth (who is for sale, by the way) and her mom are now the only mature grey alpacas in a herd that numbers 200+. Nonetheless, we were quite tickled when we walked into the Arena Sunday evening and saw this new little princess cushed next to her mama.

As for Wayfarer, on the basis of this first cria he actually got to breed the family matriarch, Marian (who had been held open over the winter to get her onto a spring/summer schedule), on Monday morning. We have one more of our females, Dulcinea, bred to him and due later this month, as well as another female that belongs to our friend and favorite co-conspirator/show-slave, Dave Serino, due in the fall. Regardless, it’s safe to say that if the fleece quality of his first daughter — provisionally named CCNF Compass Rose — is any indication, then Wayfarer will be seeing even more action later this year as well.

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