Showdown

We were at a dog agility competition for the first part of the week, coming back in the evening of each day so the animals were only left unattended for a few hours.  Mike stayed at home on the Tuesday to work with Nick and also to have a tooth removed - not by Nick but by a more qualified person in a white coat.

On Thursday we were due to go to the Honiton show with with seven alpacas to show, but the females had been remated and were not far enough into pregnancy to risk driving them around,  two of the males rolled in an old bonfire, getting covered in ash, and as the Judge was wearing cream trousers I had a feeling that he might not appreciate handling them, especially as when we got back from agility we decided to take a chance and leave them out in the paddock over night.   Bad move as the rain was torrential and we ended up taking four very bedraggled animals to the show.  So we only showed the two young males in the end.

Honiton is unusual in that it is a Shorn Fleece show as by this time of the year most herds have been shorn.  This means that the judge cannot make a very good assessment of the fleece given that it is only about an inch long.  He can assess conformation and other traits.

Jose and Pepe did achieve second and third place but the judge remarked that they were lacking in substance for young breeding males, which is OK as they have already been sold as quality pets.  I am not going to put a non breeding restriction on them, though, because their sires are great hefters.  Pepe the younger one was an orphan and so shared an adopted mother which has probably delayed his development a little.

We had quite a lot of interest in the alpacas including an interview with a reporter on one of the local free papers and two enquiries from people who actually have some land already and live fairly near to us.