ALPACA SHOWTIME

Another great weekend, this time in Cambridgeshire at Alpaca Showtime, hosted by Houghton Hall and jointly organised with The Alpaca Stud and Bozedown. Rebecca and I left on Friday morning in the rain with a very bedraggled show team but by the time we got through all the traffic on our journey the sun had come out and they had blown dry...

The venue was the biggest indoor arena I have ever been in with a great looking show ring and the show was very well organised with a good atmosphere.

There were some amazing trophies for colour Champions and I was thrilled when The Sorcerer won his class and then went on to win Grey Male Champion, which meant we could have one!!! We went off to get our photo taken - it got pretty heavy after a while! Imagine my excitement then when Bonami also won his class and went on to win Champion Fawn Male and we got another one!! Now I can do weight lifting with them!!! Shame we have to give them back next year!

Enigma came first in the Intermediate black females and Macy, Talisman, Dynasty and Bonnie all came 3rd.  A new way to close the show was to have a line-up of all the female Champions and then all the Male Champions and then the Supreme was decided between the winner of those two groups. I was pretty chuffed to have two in the male line-up.

All in all a very good weekend - lots of fun and we were home by 7.30pm and everyone was back in their fields and we were able to flop in front of the TV to watch the hunky Musketeers! Whilst we were away we have been adopted by a female Turkey - she's rather lovely and laying eggs too. Not sure how long she'll stay with us but she's rather cute.

Now I must decide who we're taking to the Heart of England ...

Rebecca with Enigma

Bonami with Shaun

Our two Champions Bonami and The Sorcerer waiting to go into Best Males

Best Males Line-up - I was pretty proud to have two out of six in there!

Our haul

Turkey Lurkey!




FIRST DAY OF SPRING

Hurrah ... well that's winter over with then, officially at least, if not literally. March 1st and it's a glorious sunny day after a frosty start - perfect.

We brought all the females in today for a weigh in, I always find it quite interesting to see who's gone up or down, or stayed the same. Only one girl, old "Aunty Miel" has lost any significant weight over the winter, she is 16 almost 17 and we don't shear her blanket off so she's been good and cosy, but its just her age I suppose catching up with her, not that she's thin, just no longer fat.  The rest have either stayed the same or increased slightly with pregnancy or growth - all good then.

This week I have been giving our website a bit of an overhaul, not done it for ages, it's  one of those things I put off doing for far too long and then once I start I can't stop fiddling with it!  I don't know enough about the works of it all really, why it can look beautifully set up on the local folder, but once uploaded to the remote site it looks completely different ... hours wasted trying to sort that out and still not finished!

I have added a new page just for a bit of fun really, thought it was worth sharing. It's basically all about one of our females Bon Bon and her family - tour female 'B' for Bretta line. I started it a couple of years ago, but only this week finished it! http://www.mvalpacas.co.uk/Featured%20Female.htm

BonBon with her cria Baylee

Well too nice to stay indoors so I'm off outside again, might get some good pics of some dry alpacas for a change!

National Show in two weeks - looking forward getting on the circuit again.