Roll Out The Red Carpet

Saturday is disinfectant day.  We normally start the day with paddock cleaning then sanitise all the feeders and drinkers before moving onto the chicken houses.  We were expecting a World Champion Alpaca Breeder to visit us tomorrow bringing a special delivery but whilst still on the paddock cleaning the telephone rang.  It was to check if it was ok to bring the visit forward a day.  We weren't really dressed for visitors but were excited all the same.

If I say it was so that nobody missed the Grand Prix tomorrow morning then those in the know will be able to identify the visitor straight away.

A couple of hours later Alpaca Royalty arrived, our new Elite Australian Herdsire, Eringa Park Lionheart ET.  I will tell you all more about him on the next blog.  To prove just how regal he is he had the aforementioned World Champion Alpaca Breeder employed as a chauffeur for his journey.  Most of us know him as Rob from Wellground Alpaca Stud, he had to come alone as Les does all the important jobs on their farm and had to stay behind.  We hadn't even had time to put the red carpet out or hang the bunting.

It was so funny getting Lionheart up to his new paddock.  He had to walk right up the chase past our girls.  He really strutted his stuff as the girls ran to the fence to stare at him, they were dancing and jumping with excitement.  I think Rob managed to get a video of it.

Lionheart settled in for a few hours and we decided to try him on one of our girls later this afternoon.  Here he is with Ashdale Delilah.  This mating should produce a cria with amazing genetics as Delilah's dam is Hemiccoyo Cricket of Cambridge which includes genetics from Hemmingway, Ruffo and and Fibre's Brutus and her sire is EP Cambridge Samson (a Supreme Champion himself) and includes more top Australian genetics from his sire EP Cambridge Peruvian Spartacus.  Samson has sired more Supreme Champions himself and, in fact, sired one of our herdsires, Ashdale Cooper.

While we had a World Champion Breeder here we weren't going to miss the chance to show off the fleeces of our home bred girls.  Rob was impressed with them so it has been well worth investing in the Elite Australian Genetics and we are definitely going to carry on the same route.  These animals hold their value and are producing the finest fibre, which we are proud to display and sell at agricultural shows which generates even more interest in the alpaca industry.

Delilah is a maiden but Lionheart is so experienced that he jsut pushed her to the ground and got to work...

...and half an hour later Delilah is looking decidedly bored with the whole procedure but Lionheart looks as though he is having a good time.

All the while this was going on we also had a hatch of pekins and silkies taking place so we had been running back and forth to the incubator checking on progress.  As I type this we have 20 out of their shells and are waiting on another 3 or 4 that are pipping.  I hope they don't take much longer as the race starts in a few hours and it would be nice to be able to fit in a few hours sleep before then.  If I manage to stay awake tomorrow evening I will try to get more pics of Lionheart and introduce him more fully.