Though we weren’t able to attend the Great Western Alpaca Show in Denver, CO this year, I did send in some spin-off fiber and one fleece.  I was happy that Renoir made the top six in his white classification coming in at 6th place out of 12 in fleece competition.  Not a blue ribbon, but a ribbon nonetheless. GWAS is a very competitive show and that includes every class offered. 

Then on Friday I picked up another box at the Post Office and in it were the two spin-off results.  Renoir got another blue ribbon – the coveted gingham one – and I was thrilled.  His score was 93/100!  Some of the comments that the spinner made were:  Beautiful fleece!   Well prepared!  Great bundles!  Spun beautifully.  Then she commented that his fleece would make great yarn for fine lace knitting!    He was 1st out of 8 entries.  Way to go Renoir!

In a spin off you send in 2 ozs. of blanket fiber.  Make sure you send in a little over 2 ozs. because if you are under weight you do get points removed from your final score.  I usually try to send in about 2.5 ozs. to be on the safe side.

The judging criteria for a spin-off are:  First Impression, Staple length (min. 3 inches), Cleanliness (this is one area where preparation will make a big difference), Lack of second cuts (this one too – get rid of all those second cuts and you’ll keep all your points), Lack of guard hair, Crimp, Staple (architecture), Uniformity, Fineness, Hand, Ease of preparation for spinning, Ease of spinning, Hand feel - softness of yarn & loft, and Brightness. 

I must mention that Stonewall took a 4th of 7 with his spin-off entry.  That’s pretty good for an older boy.  We are proud of you, too, Stonewall!

A couple months ago we were interviewed by Carolyn from Country World Newspaper.  She had seen our website, really liked it, and called one day to set up an interview.  Country World is the Rural Newspaper of Texas and can be viewed online at www.countryworldnews.com. 

The article on Hill Country Alpacas can be found by clicking here.

Carolyn was a joy to visit with and we enjoyed showing  her around the ranch.  She met some of our alpacas and took a lot of pictures.  We want to thank Carolyn for writing the article on our ranch.  A little free advertising never hurt anyone!  Thank you so much Carolyn.  Come back anytime!

 
Bailey took a 3rd place ribbon in a class of 5 light brown juvenile females .  Good results!

Madison took a 4th place ribbon in a competitive class of 14 medium fawn female yearlings!  That’s good!

And Taylor took a 3rd place ribbon in a class of 9 medium brown juvenile females.

Our two boys didn’t place.  Another show – another result.

We’re back from the A-OK Alpaca Blast Off and we came home with ribbons!  We had a fantastic time in Oklahoma and it was so much fun seeing all of our friends in the alpaca business.

Here is a run down on the ribbons:

Hill Country’s Taylor won a blue ribbon in her small class of two.

Poseidon’s Paschal won a second place ribbon in his competitive class of 11 yearling white males.  I am very pleased with this placing.  The judge commented on the uniformity of his fleece, the fineness, the density and especially liked his head style.  Good Job Paschal. 

Hill Country’s Madison placed 4th out of 11 yearling medium fawn females.

Hill Country’s Bailey placed 5th out of 7 juvenile light brown females.

Hill Country’s Sutton placed 5th out of 7 yearling dark brown males.

Here are the glamour shots pictures that I took today for the animals we are taking to the A-OK Alpaca Blast-Off. 

This is Bailey.  This will be her first show.  She is a Stonewall Jaxon daughter and a granddaughter of Peruvian Oro and Peruvian Jaxon.

This is Madison.  She is a Stonewall Jaxon daughter and a Peruvian Jaxon and Peruvian White Out granddaughter.  This will be her second show.  She got a 4th place at her first show.  She has a beautiful conformation, a fabulous head and a perfect bite.  She needs help in the fineness of her fleece and the density of her fleece.  She will make someone a very nice female for their breeding program.

This is Taylor.  She is a Snowmass Royal Flush daughter with Andean Gold, Snowmas Andean Bronze and Royal Fawn in her bloodline.  This will be her first show and we are very excited to see her in competition.

This is Sutton.  He is a Stonewall Jaxon son with Axtion Jaxon and Chinchero as grandsires.  His background is full of color!  He has a very nice handle to his dark brown fleece.

And, this is Poseidon’s Paschal.  He is a very nice Poseidon son with Caligula and Dom Lucilio as grandsires.  He has won many ribbons in the showring.  He would make a very nice herdsire for an alpaca ranch.

For the past couple of days I have been working with Taylor and Bailey to get them ready to be shown at the A-OK Alpaca Blast Off  the 24, 25 of this month. 

I have started them out slowly by first just introducing the halter to them.  Taylor, who is a little more mellow than Bailey didn’t seem to mind it too much.  But, Bailey is a different story.  She has always been a little ‘high strung’.  As a young cria she was always running from us whereas Taylor didn’t mind coming up nose to nose and having a little visit.

I knew that Taylor would be a little easier to train and today she is already walking nicely with the halter and lead.

This is a picture of Taylor as a little cria.  She is a real nice Snowmass Royal Flush daughter and we are really excited about showing her this  year.  She has the cutest little marking on her face with that  ‘T’  in white.  You can probably guess that that is why we named her Taylor.  Also, there is a Taylor County in Texas!

Next comes Bailey…  She is a Stonewall Jaxon daughter and has Peruvian Oro in her background.  She is a beautiful little medium fawn girl.  But, like I said, she is a little    ’w i l d’.  Her halter training hasn’t gone as smoothly as Taylor’s has, but we are getting there.  When I first introduced her to the halter she jumped and spit.  She did all she could to get away from me.  But, I couldn’t let her get her way.  Very gently I put the halter on her and just let her walk around with it on for about 15 minutes to get used to the feel of it on her head.  I thought I would try a little work with the lead, but felt like just letting her get used to the feel of the halter would be enough for one day. 

A couple of days went by and we tried the halter again but this time added the lead rope.  She went crazy bucking up and down and snorting and spitting.  I was getting a little worried that she was going to take a very long time to train.  Then I remembered this body wrap thing we got when we went to a Camelidynamics clinic a few years ago.  It is a wide elastic wrap that when put on the alpaca properly helps then feel all put together so that they don’t fight against their training.  Once I put this on Bailey it was amazing how much calmer she became. It really is a very useful tool.

Bailey is now is her 4th day of halter training and has improved considerably.  She no longer bucks, spits and jumps in the air.  She not perfect yet, but I am sure that she will be with a few more training sessions.  She has calmed down considerably.

This is a pic of Bailey as a cria.  Isn’t she adorable!  I haven’t taken alpaca glamour shots of these two yet, but I will be doing that in the  next couple days so that they can have a nice little stall identification tag at the shows they are going to this year.

Another surprise awaited us at the post office today.   Once again, I wondered who was sending me a box in the mail -  and the handwriting on the outside looked just like mine, weird.  You’d think I would remember that I sent these samples off a while back.  But nnnooo, not me.  And, it was my handwriting (it was also the same box that I sent the samples in).

Anyway, a few months back I entered a sample of Stonewall’s and Renoir’s fleeces in the LA Deep South Alpaca Show Spin-Off .   I ripped that box open and I was thrilled when I got into the box and saw blue.  Then I moved things around and found another blue!  So, that is another blue ribbon for Dundee’s Stonewall Jaxon - number 12, I believe.  And another for Express’ Masterpiece Renoir - number 7 for him.

Of note this time, I was thrilled to see that Stonewall got 5 out of a possible 5 points for hand feel, softness of yarn & loft.  The comment by that line was ‘amazing for age (with a smiley face)’.   And of note for Renoir was the comment on crimp as ‘well defined & consistent from tip to cut side’.  That is just one of Renoir’s great attributes – his beautiful crimp!

This beautiful son of Dundee’s Stonewall Jaxon has hit the ground running!  He is only seven months old and already has two Reserve Color Championships under his belt.  He is a stunning young male alpaca.  If you are looking for one of these yourself, give our herdsire, Stonewall, a call at 830-589-7750 and get this look on your ranch!

Congratulations Corey – you’re doing a great job!

We received some good news via the mail this morning.  There was a box waiting at the post office and when Chuck handed it to me I wondered – “now what did I order”?  It was from Colorado, but I didn’t recognize the name.  I had forgotten that I sent some fleece samples for the Spin-Off at the ABR Fall Fest that was held in October.  Here’s what was in the box -

Our beautiful herdsire Dundee’s Stonewall Jaxon has won yet another blue ribbon!  He got a score of 84 out of a possible 100 points.  We are so proud of him.  Of note is his score on ease of preparation for spinning ‘10′ of ‘10′ possible points and ease of spinning ‘10′ of ‘10′ possible points.  He also got a ‘5′ out of a possible ‘5′ for the hand, staple (architecture) and crimp.

And Express’ Masterpiece Renoir, our new herdsire, also got a ribbon.  His is a 4th place with a total score of 80 out of 100.  Renoir got an ‘8′ of ‘10′ possible points for fineness and a ‘9′ of ‘10′ possible points for uniformity.  I wonder if white in a spin-off is as competitive as the white classes are in the halter show.  If that’s the case this ribbon is great because there could be some entries that didn’t even place.

On Tuesday morning as we went down for our usual feeding and caring for the alpacas, we didn’t know it, but were in for a little surprise.

I was taking the feed bowls to the pregnant female pasture and placing them around as I usually do and as I turned around Shadow was there looking for her bowl.  As I moved toward her she backed up and turned and there hanging out of her back end was a head and two legs.  Shadow’s cria wasn’t due until November 17th, but as we all know, that doesn’t mean that’s when the actual cria will be born.

So, we were in for a birth….. and we were so glad that Shadow waited until we got back from the Mid America Alpaca Show in Kansas.  Within 30 minutes we had a nice little female alpaca on the ground.  This little girl only weighed 13.3 pounds, but boy was she full of energy and strength.  It took her about 20 minutes to stand on her own and walk.

This is Shadow’s 4th cria.  All of them have been multi colored.  We tried this breeding to ‘bleach’ out the markings by breeding her to a white male, but our plan didn’t seem to work.  I think we need a male with only white in his background – absolutely no hint of color anywhere.  Any ideas????

We have named this little one Palo Pinto.  We name our crias after counties in Texas and we thought the word Pinto in this name was perfect for her.  (Click the link on the word Palo Pinto and you can locate where that county is in Texas).  I know that Pinto means spotted or speckled and I am trying to figure out what Palo means.  If you know please let me know.