The CCA show 2013.

Carpalla WWC Achilles takes supreme champion Huacaya at the Cornwall Camellid Association 2013 show.

Seen here alongside the champion Suri and judge Jay Holland.  (Not sure why I look so miserable as I was absolutely over the moon with the result!)Jay commented on his consistency and density, with crimp everywhere.
He is out of our best female Olympic Milly who is a light fawn Hannibal of Wessex daughter.
Milly is out of Olympic Consuela who's father is Maximillian who is a Rose grey and this is where his blaze comes from.
Achilles sire is a fawn, West Webburn Calypso by Alpha Saturn.

We are hoping Achilles will make the grade as a stud male and see him as being very useful across greys and rose greys which may need improvement.

We also won our classes with our junior white male Austin and our junior brown male Alibaba. These also are sired by Calypso.

All in all a very good day for Carpalla Alpacas and I've finally got round to puting it on my blog!!

Wow!

 This is Amber who was discovered running around behind her white mum.

This is Ariadne who is out of our lovely light fawn girl Olympic Consuela.

We are now up to six cria on the ground, two girls and four boys. We now have Adam, Aragon, Arthur, Ariadne, Amber and Austin. All beginning with A as this is the first proper year of births.

Margaret and I visited the Devon County show and enjoyed catching up with our friends in the Alpaca area and we had a good look at a lot of the top animals.
We also had a good look at the Bowford Merinos which have incredibly fine wool with an amazing crimp.
I took a sample over to Chas and Rachael and told them it was from an Alpaca male owned by some friends of ours and they fell for it until I confessed what I had done! Sorry !

The annoying thing was that although they were on display their is no hope of actually getting any stock as the breeder is not selling any.

Yesterday we visited Classical Mile End Alpacas and partook in a fibre day to brush up our knowledge on all things fibre related. We had Chas in the morning on understanding the tecnical stuff and then Rachael at the sorting table on preparing fleeces for processing followed by a talk by Jean Field on the uses of fibre and avoiding some of the pitfalls associated with processing.

We also collected our stunning new male CME Tantalus who is a white Jaquinto son out of a coloured line on the dams side. We are informed that this will make him an excellent choice for white and coloured girls so we will have to wait and see next year.
The size of this male is incredible and he has amazing coverage down his legs.

I will post a picture when we can take one that does him justice as it is difficult to give an indication of just how strong and heavy boned he is.

Margaret has had her first felting day here with Lou Tonkin and the smile on her face revealed just how much she enjoyed it. They made a felted Guinea pig each and also some felted slippers. Margaret has since tried to needle felt a guinea pigs face on the slippers but she thinks it looks more like a monster.
We now need to get Lou back to fine tune the technique and increase Margaret's knowledge of felting.
If anyone is looking for a felting teacher we can't recommend Lou enough.

Oh and in the midst of all this we have shorn the sheep to get them ready for moving to a new field we have rented.

That's all for now.

Nigel.

The arrival of Carpalla Aragon.

At last Bo has given birth to a brown baby boy by West Webburn Titan.
He was born at 10am this morning and is up on his feet and sucking from mum.
He already has a very long fleece which confirms our service date and that he was a little overdue.

His name will be Carpalla WWT Aragon.

He may have great potential as a show animal as he is out of our best young brown female with sound breeding behind her.
His mother Olympic Bodicea is by Koricancha Sinbad of Wessex and out of Olympic Copper (who we also own) who is by Maximillian.

Titan is by Alpha Satturn.

That gives us two boys so far this year so hopefully the girls will come soon.

What a busy time for us.
We attended the SWAG show to have a look at the elite animals on display and ended up buying an Alpaca easy pen and a set of electronic scales so that our maintenance chores with the Alpacas will be easier.
Had a thoroughly enjoyable time chatting Alpaca constantly. We stayed at Warren holiday village which was basic but very convenient to the Hand Centre.
We took a look at as many of the top animals as we could and made sure of a good inspection of the baby Lawbreaker and the new Daredevil stud.
We were pleased to see our friends at Popham doing so well with their Suris and with Joshua.
It was also good to see CME Prometheus doing so well as he's a bit of a favourite.

On the subject of Classical Mile End this is where I went yesterday to do a shearing day.
We started with a classroom style talk from Chas on the ins and outs of why we shear and how we shear including a display of all the equipment we need and then it was down to the farmhouse for our lunch which Rachael did a lovely job too.

Then it was time for the practical session and we each had to shear two Alpacas and be head man for the person we were working with. We started with their blood donor boys which they use to spin plasma from. Some of these were old favourites and some real characters.

The one I did is now even more of a character due to his new cut style. His head was slightly wonky and front legs not quite even but it was my first attempt.

The second one was a young, non breeding boy who I felt I did a much better job to and would not look out of place in a professionally sheared herd.

Now all I have to do is get the equipment I need and then give it a go on our own girls.
All in all I would recommend the day to anyone as it was thoroughly enjoyable.

Whilst there I was also given the tour of the paddocks and got the chance to get my hands on some of the stud males so my education continues.

Whilst we have had our first cria of the year which was a boy we await further births.

Di, you asked to see a picture of him so here he is.

This is Carpalla Adam our first born 

this year. He is by West Webburn Calypso.

Today we were on a totally different track showing our Guinea pigs at Redruth. We were pleased to get best Teddy and third best non self in the show. Best of all it meant that we gained some rosettes with them at last.

first Alpaca blog

This is the first time I have ever blogged but having read the mighty Patou blog I know how it should be done!
To introduce myself I am Nigel Retallack from Cornwall and we have a herd of almost 30 Huacaya and Suri Alpacas.

We live on a very exposed site near St Austell in Cornwall. Our Alpacas have views over nearly all of West Cornwall.

We have two stud males at present which most of our Huacayas are pregnant to and are available for drive by stud service. Both are by Alpha Saturn.

These are West Webburn Titan who is a lovely medium brown and West Webburn Calypso who is fawn.

I look forward to keeping you informed of what is going on here at Carpalla Alpacas.

Nigel.