Friday, October 26, 2012
A Romantic Cinderella Story
Winning a Color Championship in front of your peers is a wonderful feeling -- but winning it with an animal that was doomed from the very start of it's life is truly a Cinderella story.
One year ago, we took Alpaquitas Peruvian Sorpresa to the elite Alpaca Breeders Invitational (ABI) show in Redmond, Oregon where she took a color championship above the "Who's Who" of all other grey females - as a yearling!
But it all started with love at first sight. My daughter and I found this girl, along with her mother in a near starvation state when Sorpresa was about 3 months of age. She had been taken away from her mother and pastured with adult llamas in 6-10 inches of mud. How she survived was a miracle. These animals were fed local grass hay which offered zero nutrition and this small cria could not compete with the aggressive herd of llamas. In fact, a broom was more nutritious than the hay they were being fed.
Sorpresa had a large grass seed protruding from her left eyeball. Loading both girls up in our trailer that day showed love, compassion and optimism. It turns out that once we reunited the mom and daughter, nursing commenced immediately and mom was able to produce milk.
As fate would have it, this pair of starving alpacas were treated with love and fed properly. Mom conceived with another cria that spring. Her fleece makes the most beautiful yarn and keeps selling out above all of our other animals. Sorpresa gifted us by winning our very first color championship. What a nice payback by two beloved alpacas.