Baarrooka Alpacas, Stud Male, Suri, Alpacas, Alpaca Farm, Baby Alpaca, Alpaca Stud, Strathbogie, Australia

Our beautiful grey appaloosa female, Lequoia Rose has finally given us an appaloosa cria.  Lequoia Rose was purchased from the US with a black female cria at foot by brown suri champion Saber and was remated to Saber, producing a brown female last year.  We ETed her with black male Ultimate Black with the result being a dark brown male and medium fawn female.  All progeny have been solid colours, with nary a spot to be seen.  After Ultimate Black and Gray Knight turned their noses up at her, Lequoia Rose was mated to white full Accoyo male Rockefeller and this week came up with the prize – a grey appaloosa female. Yippee!

By Julie Filed under: cria, ET Program, Our Animals, US Animals

My first cria from one of black imports, Kingsford, has arrived and he is lovely!  One of 3 ET cria from Kingsford and Baarrooka Topnotch, these are the only pregnancies we had before he went off to Western Australia for a year.

If this is an indication of what he produces, I can’t wait till we get him back!!

By Julie Filed under: cria, ET Program, Our Animals, Our Farm, Strathbogie, Uncategorized, US Animals

Have just gone through the summer/autumn crias and there are some real beauties in there!.  I think this year’s cria are a real jump up on quality and are consistently good across the board. Finally getting it all together!  The standouts are:

• a number of Desert Prince crias from some of my top white girls – great colour and a real improvement in fleece quality;
• the ET group from Winslow and Queen Wilhelmina (3 M, 1 F) from medium fawn to medium/dark brown;
• a stunning SLF female from Rockefeller (sister to Indie Rock);
• some very nice cria (4 M, 1 F) from ILR Snowmass Illumination, especially a SW female from Kim Wilde, Senior female Champion at 2009 National;
• a little black girl from Canchones Totem and Baarrooka Top Deck;
• Eurovision, a SLF female from Baarrooka Dire Straits and Baarrooka Eurythmics – what a dense, dense fleece; and
• a trio of boys by Kurrawa Tariq – Light brown to Queen Wilhelmina and Jupiter Star and a glow-in-the-dark white to Eliza.

Many of these cria will not be old enough to make it to the 2010 National, but I am already imagining their progeny when mated to the new US boys. WOW.

Will try to put up some more photos of these when the weather improves.

By Julie Filed under: ET Program, Our Animals

Oooh, I’m excited!

As other breeders of coloured animals know, it is a constant battle to improve the quality of each generation – it seems to be a two steps forward, one step back scenario.  Using top quality white males over coloured dams works, but loss of colour is always a big risk.

I have a number of high performance coloured females which I have been using, over the past 5 years, to increase the number of quality coloured suri in my herd utilising Embryo Transfer technology.  This has worked very well and I have produced top quality males and females from donors Baarrooka Queen Wilhelmina, Baarrooka Cordela, Pucara Eliza and Baarrooka Elara.  The let down in this has been the lack of coloured males who have the fleece qualities I want in my herd and can provide consistent results.  Interestingly, Cedar House Winslow, a LF Amador son has produced the best results from a number of ET donors.

After thinking long and hard and doing my research, eighteen months ago I began the next stage in my long term program to bump up the quality throughout my herd.  I purchased a half share of Cedar House Desert Prince, an older male who has proven to throw 72% coloured cria from white dams and whose daughters are often very good producers (e.g. Queen Wilhelmina and Elara’s dam!).  And, to other breeder’s alarm, I mated the majority of my top white and light fawn females to Desert Prince.  I then went on a search to find THE male to go over his daughters.

Well, the first Desert Prince cria are now being born – yes, colour to white – and their covering sire, Durango,  is due to arrive in Australia from the US on 14th February.  A couple more years to see if the 10-year plan works, but already I am seeing some real improvements in each generation of coloured animals.  They are not necessarily all show winners- that’s not what I am breeding for – but we are layering on the characteristics we want – lustre, fineness, density – generation by generation. The combination of generations of ET, Desert Princes’ colour and quality influence and the superb fineness, density and coverage contributed by 3/4 Accoyo Durango will, I think,  start to show some real results in the coming years.  I can’t wait!

By Julie Filed under: ET Program, Our Animals, US Animals

The last of the 2008 ET cria are here and there’s some stunners in there! We had a total of 24 ET cria for the year, of which 8 were female and 16 male (not as good as our past 50:50 ratio).

We are particularly excited about 4 cria (2 males and 2 females) from Baarrooka Queen Wilhelmina and Pinjarra Machu Mayu. They are only 4 weeks old, but are tall and athletic and have great greasy and lustrous fleeces. Also 2 little males from Baarrooka Cordela (the dam of Skyhooks and Dire Straits) and Surilana Omar are looking pretty impressive as well. They will be too young for this year’s show season, but watch out for them in 2009!

By Julie Filed under: ET Program, Our Animals