Phoebe 57 of AlpineRanch is the culmination of 4 generations of breeding efforts at Alpine Ranch, her powerhouse of a genetic lineup took 12 years and over $100,000 in seed money to build.
The Sire: Snowmass Quechua’s Phoenix (S. Quechua x S. Highland Lass)
I purchased my first three breeding female Alpacas in 2004 and a short time later, in February of 2005, a single Alpaca stud by the name of Snowmass Invincible sold at auction for a then record $585,000. I did some research into his pedigree and discovered that Invincible had an older brother, still residing at Snowmass. As a breeder, I thought that if my favorite breeding female had two boys in a row, I would probably sell one and keep the “better” one. (Time would tell that this assumption was indeed correct.) So in February of 2006, I made the largest capital expenditure in the short history of my small Alpaca operation and purchased Highland Lass at auction (Lot #2), bred to Snowmass Quechua. And as luck would have it, on 8/16/06, Snowmass Quechua’s Phoenix was born.
Snowmass Quechua is the son of Elite, one of the best Accoyo herdsires out of the sixth and final Peruvian importation, and Maree Love, a daughter of Peruvian Hemingway G171 and Peruvian Lace (2P Caligula G4572 x Allianza import). Quechua is the 2002 Futurity White Color Champion as well as the 2006 and 2007 Futurity Light Herdsire of the Year. Tragically, while Phoenix was in-utero, Quechua suffered a fatal head injury in an accidental collision with a T-post while neck wrestling with another male. Quechua is survived by 87 outstanding offspring, 40 females and 47 males, including Phoenix. In 2010, Phoenix’s half paternal brother, Snowmass Matrix sold for the current record auction price for a single Alpaca of $675,000.
S. Quechua histograms:
1yr: 14.8 mic / 3.0 sd / 20.2 cv / 0.4 >30+
2yr: 16.6 mic / 3.4 sd / 20.2 cv / 0.5 >30+
3yr (grid): 18.7 mic / 4.0 sd / 21.4 cv / 1.1 >30+
By Julie Skinner: "Snowmass Quechua was a unique and exquisite stud male derived from our intensive and dedicated breeding program and no doubt the "ideal" representation of all that we strive to breed into our Alpacas."
Snowmass Highland Lass is the granddaughter of both Accoyo 3P Augusto 6009 and Accoyo Peruvian Snowmaster. By Julie Skinner: "Snowmass Highland Lass is one of our Highland lines that we highly treasure. They are strong bodied, well defined alpacas with great density and well-proportioned bodies. Classic heads with fine dense wool production on top knot and into extremities. She has a beautiful silky crimp style with a long staple. Highland Lass is one of the few females with champion Snow King and Snowmaster in line..."
S. Highland Lass histograms:
1yr: 18.9 mic / 5.6 sd / 29.6 cv / 3.5 >30+
2yr: 21.8 mic / 5.6 sd / 25.7 cv / 5.5 >30+
3yr: 21.7 mic / 6.8 sd / 31.5 cv / 8.3 >30+
Lass has proven herself over her illustrious career as one of our best cornerstone foundation females. A 2002 model, she has been with us since February of 2006. A strong producer of quality offspring, she had her final cria in 2016. Of the 90 plus Alpacas at Alpine Ranch, Highland Lass (“Lassie”, of course) is the density queen. During the winters, I have often found her as one of the last to still be outside, sleeping, under a few inches of freshly fallen snow.
Her personality is perfect, very mellow, non-excitable and she has a calming effect on others. She is a dream and very easy to work with when it comes to meds, toenails, breedings, births, medical attention, etc. Lass has a perfect to near-perfect bite, I have never had to trim her teeth. She has always had white or beige offspring, never any with spots. Her first cria, Snowmass Quechua’s Lass (16.3 mic / 4.0 sd / 24.4 cv / 0.1 >30+) was retained by Snowmass for use in their breeding program.
The Dam: Shelby of AlpineRanch (Sambuca Royale x Tallulah Bahama)
If you look into Matrix’s lineage ($675,000 auction price record holder), you will find that his dam is a daughter of the one and only $1.5 million Alpaca herdsire, Accoyo 4P Legacy 6016. So when building a perfect match for our Snowmass Quechua’s Phoenix that is where I started. With 4P Legacy 6016.
Peruvian Wonder was born the same year as her Rockstar half-brothers Snowmass Legacy Gold and Snowmass Millenium. Wonder’s dam was a medium brown from the Kenamari region, 21.3 micron test report, selected personally by Julie Skinner in the 4th Peruvian import. I personally think Julie was breeding Legacy to everyone and everything before she sold him to Crescent Moon the following year, but it is quite obvious she was looking for color out of Legacy and Wonder is solid white, probably the reason we were able to acquire her.
Wonder was certainly one of our very best foundation females. Her 16th fleece measured 20.2 mic / 4.4 sd / 21.8 cv / 3.0 >30+. Wonder is the dam of LZJ Charlemagne, our 4x First Place winner and the Fawn Male Color Champion at the 2008 Great Western Alpaca Show (class V). GWAS was the 2nd largest show in the U.S. that year and Senior AOBA Judge Amanda VandenBosch chose Charlie as the Color Champ out of 84 medium and dark fawn males.
Wonder was a big girl and tall, most definitely the alpha female in her prime and well into her later years. Normally weighing in the mid-170s to low 180s, she weighed in at 218 one year in May, one week before shearing and three weeks before giving birth, carrying 10 pounds of fleece and 20 pounds of baby. I feed an orchard grass hay with a touch of alfalfa in it, Wonder developed a method of pushing all the hay out of the feeder with her head, so she could get to the tasty alfalfa bits that had collected at the bottom of the feeder. Something we were happy to tolerate because her babies were so damn good.
But as we are seeking to add additional fineness to the mix, we seek out the well-known producer of fine-fleeced offspring, Peruvian Hemingway G171. We breed Wonder to Snowmass Andean Dream, son of Hemingway and a super-fine, dark fawn female from the Kenamari region, again selected personally by Julie Skinner out of the 4th Peruvian import, 4P Amanda. At 4 years of age, 4P Amanda had a micron test average fiber diameter of 16.3.
The match of Andean Dream and Wonder produced light fawn powerhouse,
Tallulah Bahama. Tooley’s 3rd fleece measured 17.8 microns. Tooley’s 9th fleece measured 17.2 microns. All the while bred and nursing. Having one of the very best herdsires to ever leave Accoyo, 4P Legacy 6016, and one of the very best herdsires to be imported from Allianza, Peruvian Hemingway G171, as your grandsires certainly has its advantages, as we did get plenty of very good things out of Tooley’s royal genetic pool. We have Accoyo Legacy’s size, stature, strength of frame and fleece density, Hemingway’s fineness, tightness of fleece and a proven holder of that fineness into the later years.
All this gem needs is a little polishing. Enter the setup guy, Sambuca Royale.
(*** Turnkey Alpaca breeding business worth
$400,000+, yours for a
50% discount or
$200,000 off,
ONLY $200,000. Everything you need. For an additional small hourly wage, I will stay on for a full year as your Ranch Manager to insure your success. Click
HERE for more information. Thanks for looking!
***)The year was 2008, I was about one year into running my ranch full time. Still a little green. I was still reeling from having just lost my first dystocia, Tooley’s second baby. I wasn’t going to repeat the breeding that led to that problem birth, so that left me with two choices. Either repeat Tooley’s first breeding, or give a shot to Sambuca Royale. Sam had just turned three and was ready for action. Phoenix had just turned two and wouldn’t be ready for another year.
The Sam x Tooley match led to the birth of
Shelby of AlpineRanch in 2009. Shelby is an improvement over her dam Tooley in almost every way. While still possessing her dam’s size and strength of frame, as well as her fineness and propensity to hold onto that fineness as she ages, Shelby has increased density and fleece coverage, greater production in fleece weight and improved staple length and fleece character. Shelby’s second fleece was clearly the best fleece I had produced up to that point, after 8 years of breeding Alpacas. 16.2 mic / 3.2 sd / 19.5 cv / 0.6 >30+. Shelby’s fifth fleece (2014) while bred and nursing, measured 18.1 mic / 3.9 sd / 21.5 cv / 1.6 >30+.
Based on the strength of Shelby, as compared to Tooley’s first offspring sired by our density guy Andy and Tooley’s third offspring sired by our premiere stud Snowmass Quechua’s Phoenix, I elected to repeat the Tooley x Sam match in both 2012 and 2013.
The first Sam x Tooley match was sort of a chance occurrence due to limited choices at the time, the fact that I even have Sam in the first place is also a bit of a chance occurrence. Sam’s dam Luxora was carrying Sam in-utero when we purchased her from Magical Farms in 2004.
Luxora has also proven herself as one of our best cornerstone foundation females. Granddaughter of Allianza import great, Peruvian Bueno G173. Daughter of Peruvian Dakotia, the beginning of the highly successful Magical Farms primary Dakotia – Jericho – Jeremiah – Playboy line. Luxora came to us, already bred to My Peruvian Tesoro, an Accoyo and Allianza – Huaripina cross. This was a match that I probably would not have chosen for Luxora’s first breeding, but the folks at Magical Farms knew what they were doing. Tesoro had won first place in the white yearling class of the 2001 AOBA National Alpaca Fleece Show and Tesoro’s full brother, Total Asset, had just sold for $100,000 at the 2004 Breeder’s Choice Auction.
Sambuca Royale has an especially long body, a quality that you might not usually pay much attention, but one that results in another 3 inches of production space for prime blanket fleece. Along with his exceptional density and the additional production of prime fiber down the legs and up the neck, Sam’s yearly blanket fleece weight rivals other males 20 to 30 pounds larger than him. But having had Sam since 2005, I think his best quality is his longevity, or his ability to maintain his choice qualities as he ages. See the attached photo of a sample from Sam’s 10th fleece. The staple length isn’t what it once was but the fleece character or crimp is still there. And check out those CVs:
Sambuca Royale histograms:
1yr: 18.8 mic / 3.4 sd / 18.1 cv / 0.9 >30+
3yr: 21.1 mic / 4.1 sd / 19.4 cv / 1.8 >30+
9yr: 21.4 mic / 3.8 sd / 17.6 cv / 2.5 >30+
Of the 90 to 100 huacaya breeding females that I have bred, purchased or sold over the past 15 years, these three, Peruvian Wonder, Snowmass Highland Lass and My Peruvian Luxora, have risen to the top to become cornerstone foundation females. They have achieved this rank not because of this quality or that, but for the only quality that really matters when it comes to breeding females. They were judged on the quality of their offspring. For the simple fact that as their best work grew up, they were the ones chosen to create future generations at Alpine Ranch. And by making Phoebe 57 a part of your future, you are getting the genetics from all three.
The lineage of Phoebe 57 includes some of the very best Peruvian imported Herdsires:
12.5% P Hemingway G171
12.5% 6P Accoyo Elite 5057 IMPR98
6.25% Accoyo 4P Legacy 6016
6.25% Accoyo 3P Augusto 6009
6.25% Accoyo P Snowmaster
6.25% Accoyo 3P Dracula 6016
3.125% P Bueno G173
3.125% 2P Caligula G4572
56.25%
And some very notable female Peruvian imports:
3.125% 2P Jesusa R0662 – white from Allianza – Cconchatanca, the same member farm of the government-owned Allianza co-op from which Peruvian Hemingway also originated.
3.125% 3P Lilly 4605 – white from Accoyo, carried Snowmaster in-utero through quarantine and importation.
3.125% P Robin W941 – medium fawn from Allianza, owned predominately by Maple Brook, she had 10 offspring, 5 sired by P Bueno. Dam of P. Dakotia, sire of MFI P. Jericho.
6.25% 3P Flamboyant 5085 – white from Kenamari
6.25% 2P Elizabeth R0652 – white from Allianza – Cconchatanca, dam to Snowmass /Cchatanca and CCNF Polaris
6.25% 3P Tafeta 4845 – white from Allianza – Huaripina, owned by Magical Farms, dam of My Peruvian Rolex and My Peruvian Tesoro
6.25% 5P Lila 8351 – medium brown from Allianza – Antacalla, owned by Magical Farms, had 8 offspring, 7 females.
6.25% 4P Amanda 6603 – dark fawn from Kenamari, 16.3 microns at 4 years, chosen personally by Julie Skinner out of the 4th import. Owned by Snowmass and then Cas-Cad-Nac. Dam to Incan Magic, Andean Dream.
6.25% 4P Afrodita 6598 – medium brown from Kenamari, 21.3 microns at 2 years, chosen personally by Julie Skinner out of the 4th import. Had 10 offspring, lived to be 20 years old.
ConclusionAlright, let’s not beat around the bush about this. I have the numbers for the 2018 Futurity Auction and the 2018 Parade of Champions Auction. I can point to some females sold in those auctions that have similar qualities and lineages to Phoebe57, sort of like comparables in real estate. The average female in those auctions sold for between $10,000 and $11,000.
I will stipulate it would cost me about $1,000 to get Phoebe into one of those auctions, with an additional $500 in travel. So if Phoebe’s fictional auction price is $10,000, her “off the farm” price would be $8,500. For the purposes of expediency, I will offer a
$2,500 discount on the 2021 sales price of Phoebe 57.
$6,000 cash sale. With a down payment of $1,500, I would also accept payments of $400 each month for 12 months.
Please visit Phoebe 57's
sales page on OpenHerd.
Please View Our Additional Alpine Ranch blog posts:
Superfine Natural FibersTop 10 Reasons to Get Started with Alpacas in ColoradoThe Best Natural FiberThank YouAlpacas at Alpine Ranch is the home to 30+ huacayas. Breeding quality Alpacas since 2004, we specialize in Foundation Females, Starter Packages & Stud Services for sale. 27 miles S/E of Denver, 32 miles N/E of Colorado Springs, due east of Castle Rock off Hwy 86, located in Elizabeth, Colorado.