Huge success for Alpacas Among Friends Event that was held this past weekend, Feb. 20 – Feb. 21st. Although the weather didn’t work well for the event at all on Saturday with the temperature being in the 40′s and then raining to the point of hail at times our friends that showed up were die hard knowledge seekers who stayed no matter what the weather dealt us.
On Saturday Tom did a presentation on alpaca husbandry. He was all set up with his samples on the different types of grasses offered in our area as well as the different types of minerals and grains. It was during Tom’s presentation that the rain started to come down hard. Each of the host ranches had to leave Tom to continue on his own and entertain the guests while the rest of us ran outside to move the sale alpacas up to shelter out of the rain. Lucky for me Tom has the gift of gab and felt right at home lecturing.
Saturday afternoon I, Janice, spoke about how to create an alpaca ranch store. I wasn’t expecting an introduction, but Deb Hill of Cloud Dancer Alpacas got up in front of the class to give me one. I was humbled at how she advised how great a job I had done creating my ranch store from scratch with never having any knowledge on retail before doing so. It was a very nice intro. At the end of the class Linda Wood of Square Top Ranch gave me two thumbs up.
On Sunday I gave another lecture on how to select your breeding pairs. Basically this was an informative class on breeding up your herd.
Other speakers included Deb Hill of Cloud Dancer Alpacas (renowned alpaca speaker), Mike & Linda Wood of Square Top Ranch, and Dave & Nancy Crowley of Madera Canyon Alpacas and Fiber Works. Everyone one of these speakers did an awesome job and it was proven by the students’ compliments at the end of each day. They were impressed at the amount of information we shared, how laid back and friendly we all were, and how much fun it was to learn and make new friends. Best of all the event was free for the entire weekend!!!!
Tom with Mercedes as the students were evaluating her fleece. Mercedes did a great job and remained quite calm throughout the entire experience. Students claimed she was the sweetest alpaca being evaluated.
Here the students were assessing four different female alpacas that were all similar in age and color after listening to Deb Hill’s lecture on how to assess fiber when making an alpaca purchase.
Some of the students at Alpacas Among Friends.
More students at Alpacas Among Friends.
Linda, brown jacket, and Nancy, blue jacket, listening to a student give their reasoning as to which female alpaca had the best temperment, best fiber, most guard hair, heaviest female, and lightest female.
In this picture, Deb Hill, is giving a talk on how to sell alpacas in the current economy.
Here Linda Wood is giving a lecture on how to be involved with the community. It helps sales!
