I was tired of waiting, so a cria decided to be born now that I wasn’t looking.
I never met Aramis’ dad, but I know his dam, and his sisters. Aramis’ temperament is not from his dam. Grace’s personality, or alpacality if you want, comes from Aramis. Aramis had it, Grace has it, and her baby son has it to the extreme.
Grace had this her.first.cria by herself, in the field surrounded by her herd, with no assistance, complications and The Boss as improvised last minute witness. All very chilled out.
So we don’t lose the habit, it hasn’t got a name yet. We’ll come back to this later.
He seems to be the most content animal we’ve ever bred. I dare say more than Quechua. He doesn’t even fight the handling. So docile.
I remember a couple of years ago Peggy, Raspberry and Stardust were a nightmare to handle. You had to literally hunt them to do any health checks or vaccines, and it was a two-person job. Not with this one.
So the young boy is son of Grace and he’s modern grey, what I call a solid “pink shade of brown”. I don’t really care about fancy names of colours, it’s a battle not to be won, but that’s how my eye percieves this one. He carries the grey modifier, no doubt. He’s our first grey with no pattern.
His conformation looks quite good, particularly well aligned strong legs, straight back, champion’s posee with a lovely sharp face and perfect ears. His humming is very cute, and he uses it constantly as he wonders away from Grace, so mum knows where to find him.
His fleece is not bad either, very bright, really soft – obviously. I have to take a closer look to that one.
His birth weight 6.93kg. He looks bigger than that, I’ll put it down to fluffiness. Not the biggest boy for how long he spent in the oven, but a good weight.
He’s quite a nice little boy. See how he grows. Competence is fierce.
Kestle Alpacas 