The show season is here

First things first. French Frankie, our string eating alpaca is back to normal and grazing along with the others.He spent a couple of days mostly kushed down staring into space wondering what had hit him, but all's well now.
We're just waiting for the alpaca bean necklace to exit!
Gary Sanders from Pophams spent a few days with us last week to take in the Salbris alpaca show and try to continue their show winning run this side of the channel with a few males that stay at Quelvehin.
French alpaca shows go from strength to strength each year. The entries have grown in size (170 this time) and the quality gets better and competition harder.
Salbris was a new venue for the Concours International organised by Alpaga Developpement and only a stones throw from Vierzon where it is usually held. A fantastic stable block within the grounds of a chateau. You'll have take my word for it as I still have no photos!
We took our usual gang of three stud males plus two new boys
Judged by Matt Lloyd , Daniel and Alfonso both took first place rosettes in their respective brown classes for Gary, and Columbus was placed second in a very high quality senior white male class, losing out to the eventual show winner Jolimont Attitude owned by Alpagas Sologne.
For our part,the mighty Atlas was up in the Champions league again for the forth year running this time,taking reserve champion black huacaya.and a first place in the black fleece entry.  What a star.
Columbus and Atlas have both proved their worth in the showrings in recent years and now we shall reap some rewards with a handful of stud services already in place.We are certainly looking forward to our own C&A cria this year.

        photograghs supplied curtesy of gary sanders and ginny cobb.