We first became aware of Maestro’s sire, Xanadu P. Concerto, a little over 2 years ago while speaking to Jerry and Karin Young at the Empire Extravaganza. The Youngs are the owners of Spirit Wind Farm & Fiber Studio in New York and they had actually purchased Concerto from Xanadu Alpacas in Colorado, a year or two before we purchased his full sister, Cadenza. If you’ve followed the comings and goings of our breeding program over the past 4 years or so, you know that we -- with very good reason -- pretty much worship the ground that sweet Cadenza walks on. Without sounding too obnoxious: given our time and experience in this business, it’s just not that often that we can add a female to the mix from the outside that is also instantly near the top of our herd’s depth chart. Yeah, she’s that great. Anyway, needless to say it got our attention that the Young’s had her full brother in the mix at their place and it led to us kind of keeping tabs on their herd and watching what Concerto (not to be confused with CCNF Concerto, Cadenza’s SuperNova son who is likewise a Herdsire of ours) was making for them.
Fast forward to the 2013 Empire Extravaganza last fall and I (Ian) was walking into the show ring to see and put my hands on the Light Male Champion and Reserve Champion, the purple banner being held that day by none other than Jerry Young! My first thought on putting my hands into Maestro’s fleece, was “WOW, that’s soft!” I know you’d think we experience that all of the time but the handle on this young male was nonetheless exceptional. When we found out shortly thereafter that Maestro was also one of their Concerto sons, it quickly got our wheels turning. Long story short, by the end of that day we had agreed to buy the Young’s superlative young Herdsire from them. One could argue, I suppose, that we were hedging our bets on Cadenza’s line by adding her nephew to the mix. Or maybe just being greedy? In our minds you can never have too much of the really great lines,