Photos Salbris

As promised here are a few photos of the show.  Sorry for the delay but I had to beg them from the four corners of Europe ,so thanks to Gary Sanders who managed to find a couple without someone holding up a brochure with his advert on the back and Ginny Cobb who managed to find one without her  on. Nobody, by the way, took one with me on - oh well I was only the  organisor what should I expect.

First of all a ring full of young white suri males.  A real pleasure to see given that normally we would expect no more than half a dozen in total throughout the entire show.  There were  nine in this class alone with a further 16 spread across both  sexes and the  full colour range, whites, beige, fawns and even black.

 

 

The total inscriptions for the show were 163 so this makes a staggering 15% of the entries suri's.  Nick Harrington Smith  was surprised and delighted to be able to judge so many in one class saying - ' one rarely see's so many suri's   entered  in an English show, let alone here in France'.  Given the world population of suri's being  just 5% of the total  Huacaya  population, thanks to the Spanish invasion of the 15th century,  it was truely a wonderful sight.

Next up is Izzam,  a Columbus boy,  who has a fleece to die for but unfortunately has just refused to grow on during the winter months, so I have to admit I had reservations about taking him and in the end my reservations  were justified when he was awarded a second to Ginny's Manot, because of his size, still the class numbered eight so he didn't do too bad despite his size - he'll be back - watch
this space !

 

                                    Here he is trying to look big - stand up straight lad !

I couldn't resist putting up this next  one.  Some people come to win, other people come to compete and generally have a good time.  Ron and Judi  of La Grand Mere alpacas fall into the latter category.  They had no aspirations of winning anything, a single third would have been ample,  but  here is Judi getting first place (oh and yes Ginny again) with Elpenor or Elpie as he is affectionately known, out of Snowmass Sizlin Hot, in the Adult Male H brown class -  Judi your face was a picture - well done.

I suppose the main event of the day for us was Daniel.  Popham Daniel has been with us now for so long that I tend to forget he doesn't belong to us.  So when he was awarded Champion Black at the age of 82 months I couldn't help feel extremely proud of him and that somewhere along the way we must have had a hand in it.  The judge said that he had a fleece as fine as a crias, so we must have been feeding him something good. Here he is with his real Mum Felicia.

Finally I come to the Atlas Progeny class.  Once again, I had my doubts , all three of the progeny I had not seen in advance and although I was happy with them as individuals, all together I can not say they were similar, something that is essential for a progeny class. So here they are two  females  from La Grand Mere  (told you Silhouette was the best !) and little Electron, third in his class.

 

 

The best thing for me when we go down to the AD show is meeting up with all the other breeders not only across France but Europe, its lovely meeting up again with people who I now class as friends, hearing their news and talking alpaca all weekend without them  yawning or getting bored. People who say they don't do shows and that they are not into all that, are missing a great weekend - we have such good fun !!  - freezing together !! oh boy was it cold !