Ribbons for everyone!

We haven't attended an alpaca show in a couple of years, but we still remember the feeling of bringing an animal into the ring and leaving the ring without a ribbon. I am extremely happy to report that all four of our alpacas received ribbons at this year's Great Midwest Alpaca Festival!

Frances Bean received a 2nd Place ribbon! We had to wait until Sunday afternoon to show her but we're happy with her beautiful red ribbon. HPF Leroy took 3rd place in his medium fawn juvenile suri male class. The judge remarked that he couldn't place him higher than third because his color was inconsistent (light fawn, medium fawn and dark fawn throughout his body). I'm thinking he would have done better if we had placed him in a pattern/indefinite color class instead.

Nuno took home a 4th place ribbon and Luxor's Lucas took 5th in his class. I'm especially pleased with Lucas' placement mainly because of the tough class of light fawn males. Lucas has a "flat lock" structure to his fiber which doesn't always look as impressive as those with the tight spiral-shaped locks of fiber. Lucas was the only alpaca in the ring with flat locks and he placed above two other males because of his luster and density of his fleece. I know many people wouldn't be happy with fifth place, but it sure felt good not having to walk out of the ring empty handed.

We took pictures in the show ring but none of them turned out. All of the pictures were blurry, probably because of the distance we were standing from the ring or the lighting in the arena. Whatever the case, they didn't turn out. I was really hoping I'd have at least one photo to post.

We arrived in Madison Friday afternoon and had our stalls set up and animals color-checked by around 5:30 or 6:00. It took about three people to decide which color class to place Leroy in because of the different color variations. In the future, I'll plan to put him in a pattern class if possible.

We were up bright and early Saturday morning to get to the arena before 8:00 and get our stalls cleaned up again. Then we waited...we didn't get to show Lucas or Leroy until late Saturday afternoon. Rick took Nuno into the ring Sunday morning and I showed Franny in one of the last classes of the day on Sunday afternoon. By the time I brought Franny into the ring, we had most of our things packed up for the trip home. It was a long weekend with a lot of waiting time and nervous butterflies. It's good to be back home again.

Next on our list is to start shearing alpacas. There are some fleece show and spin-off deadlines coming up soon so we'll be shearing some "entries" this weekend.

On our way to Madison!

Not much time to post a message this morning since we're getting packed up for the Great Midwest Alpaca Festival. Hopefully I'll have some good news to report when we return from the big weekend in Madison.

Keep us in your thoughts and/or stop by and visit with us if you're at the show!
Have a great weekend!

Rain, rain go away...

I was hoping we'd get some rain to help clean our alpacas off before this weekend's show. Well, we got it - three days of it! Here is a picture of poor Nuno on Monday. He is much drier and fluffier today than the last few days.

All of our suri boys at the farm chose to spend more time out in the rain (and some snow) than in their shelters. They were so soggy looking that I'd feel bad for them and put a little more hay and straw in their shelter. They'd go in for a while to warm up, but then they'd be right back out in that rain!

Thankfully, the rain has stopped and we should have sunny weather with temps getting up to 70 over the next couple of days! That will give the boys and Franny three good days of drying out before Saturday.

Our new stall mats and halters arrived a couple of days ago. Now I just have to get things organized and decide what else we need to take to the show. Off the top of my head, that list includes feed, hay, water buckets, muck bucket and "pooper scooper" to keep the stall clean, grooming supplies, show halters and leads, business cards and marketing materials to promote our farm. I'll have to sit down and think if there's anything else besides ourselves and our show clothes...I'm sure there is.

This is our first show in a couple of years so I'm getting a little nervous. Once we get there though, it's all up to our animals to look their natural best. Of course we can help them by picking all the hay we can out of their fiber and properly leading them into the show ring and handling them well for the judges to get a look at them.

We'll have to wait and see...

Preparing for the show

We've only got a week left for final preparations for next weekend's alpaca show. Since I did a poor job of blogging in March and April, I'll fill you in on the details of what we've been doing to prepare.

Recently, we had our vet take blood samples from our alpacas who will be attending the show. One of the show requirements includes testing your alpacas for the presence of an active BVDV (Bovine Viral Diarrhea Virus) infection. This is to prevent any Persistently Infected (PI) alpacas from entering the show facility. It's a good idea to have your animals tested whether you are attending a show or not. Thankfully, to date, our entire herd has all tested negative for BVDV so we are good to go.

We also had to have our vet examine our four alpacas and complete a Certificate of Veterinary Inspection within 30 days of the show. In addition, we have to pay close attention to them during this week to make sure they are still healthy. We'd never want to bring a sick animal to a show and we wouldn't want anyone else to expose a sick animal to ours. A veterinarian will be at the show during check-in to make sure all animals entering the show are healthy. Any sick alpacas won't be allowed in.

This past week, we ordered new stall mats for our show stalls and a couple of new halters so we're patiently awaiting our shipment to arrive.

The show also requires that we worm our animals seven days prior to the show so this weekend we wormed them with Ivermectin and Safeguard.

In addition, we double-checked everyone's microchip with our chip scanner. We had chipped Nuno over a year ago when he was just a cria and had noticed late last year his microchip didn't show up when we scanned him. We thoroughly scanned him today from head to toe and we still couldn't locate the chip. It may have fallen out sometime after inserting last year if we didn't push the needle in far enough. Today we inserted a new chip and I'm confident it will stay put.

During this week, we'll be fine tuning our halter training with the crias. We took Leroy and Lucas for a long walk on Saturday and I was amazed at the major improvement with Lucas. I have to do more work with Frances this week, but I know she'll be fine.

There's still more to do to prepare so I'll keep you posted during the week as our countdown to showtime continues...

I asked the boys to pose for a photo...

Can you believe they posed for this?! I was so excited to get this picture of our boys on Thursday! My mom and I led Leroy and Lucas (front row, left to right) outside to their very own pasture yesterday. It's right next to our older boys' pasture (left to right Iggy, Nuno, Rico).

The little guys were so happy to be out - we've had them in the barn since they were weaned late last year. Now they are getting some sunshine and maybe even a little rain this weekend. That would be good for them because the rain will give them a better "suri look" and help tighten up their locks a little. That will be great for next weekend's alpaca show.

Lucas is getting better on the lead now...he at least isn't dropping to the ground and insisting we drag him. I'm still a little nervous with the show coming up, but I think he'll be fine. We'll take him, Leroy and Frances for a walk or two this weekend to get them used to it. Plus I'll still be working with them during the week leading up to the show.

I'm also going to add them to our Alpaca Nation and Alpaca Street websites now that I've gotten some new pictures of them. At this time next week, we'll be on our way to the Alliant Energy Center in Madison for the Great Midwest Alpaca Festival!

Our first BLUE RIBBON!

We learned recently that our very first fiber spin-off entry received a blue ribbon!

Last year we attended a skirting bee at another alpaca farm and learned how to properly skirt our fleeces for shows as well as prepare entries for spin-off competitions.

Rene', her daughter Beth and I worked diligently at cleaning all the tiniest pieces of vegetable matter from our first entry. We used beautiful medium brown fiber from our 2-1/2 year old male suri, HPF Iggy. We entered the spin-off competition for the 2009 Spring Bling Alpaca Show in Neenah, WI. Chris Rogers of Whisper Meadows Alpacas in DePere notified me of our first place ribbon and kindly returned our entry w/ribbon in the mail since we weren't able to attend the show.

Comments from the judge included, "Very nice color!" and "Excellent shine!"

We did, however, get dinged a few points for inconsistent lengths of fiber in our entry. We will need to stay within 1/2" length variance. We also need to pay attention to the variations of fineness so that we include the same, consistent samples of fiber in each entry. It was a great learning experience overall. We're so excited to have gotten our first blue ribbon!

We've been preparing for the Great Midwest Alpaca Festival show in Madison, WI, coming up April 25-26th. I promise to have more blog updates over the next two weeks as I get our four alpacas ready for their big public debut!