More than one person appears to think that the Regional Type Conferences are either a debate about the pros and cons of a breed standard or a vote about what people want.
Neither is correct.
The purpose behind the regional type conferences approach is three fold; firstly to educate members about what is involved in establishing and maintaining an alpaca breed standard, secondly to give everyone an opportunity to contribute towards defining an acceptable alpaca breed standard and finally the vote.

To achieve this, the various conferences will all have to adopt a similar format:
Each conference will have a panel of veterinarians who will present on basic alpaca anatomy, form and function matters and discuss how a breed standard would affect the overall health, anatomy and function of alpacas.
A panel of experienced AOBA certified judges would give a presentation on how alpacas are judged in the show ring and how a breed standard would affect judging of alpacas.

Each regional type conference then decides what characteristics would make up an acceptable alpaca breed standard. Features such as fleece character, head type, muzzle length, top line structure and bone density. Each of these features is then discussed in small groups and at the end of the day, a position paper is written for that particular regional conference.

Each position paper is then circulated to the entire AOBA membership. The AOBA and ARI boards will then take the regional position papers, sort the results into an aggregate ?beginning document? for the final Type Conference. This will go through exactly the same process as the regional conferences. The ending document will be the final document voted upon by the membership after it has been circulated, reviewed and discussed by the entire AOBA and ARI membership.

So the first regional type conference is now over and appears to have gone reasonably well.
There is a feeling that the first conference was too pro breed standards and that it would have been better served if there had been an expert to speak against breed standards. The AOBA board say that try as they might they were unable to find an expert who would take on that role.

As Winston Churchill once said: "This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning."

By Adrian Stewart

Meanwhile, despite the lack of high profile auctions a new world record price was recently achieved for a male alpaca. Ernie and Barbara Kellogg of Double ?O? Good Alpacas and Mike and Robin Tierney of Maple Brook Alpacas recently purchased PPPeruvian Royal Fawn a full Accoyo male from Camelids of Delaware for $600,000 (?338,000).
Royal Fawn is the only light fawn Accoyo ever exported from Don Julio Barreda?s herd and was the 1999 and 2000 "Get-of-Sire" winner at the AOBA National Show. Royal Fawn is also the sire of Dom Lucilio, a legendary male known as ?the herd sire of champions? with more than 75 champion and blue ribbon offspring.

2006 is just around the corner and more than one pundit is asking if we will breach the $1million barrier in the New Year

By Adrian Stewart

The primary culprits in most problem skin cases are mites. There are three kinds of these nasty little devils that cause the majority of symptoms:
Sacroptes scabii (scabies), chorioptic, and psoroptes.

There are solutions one is the not so well known "Witches Brew" which contains the following:

2/3 pint mineral oil

1/5 pint DMSO

8 ml Ivermectin

5 cc Gentamycin (50 mg per ml)

I have had some succes with this. But the ingredients are pretty nasty and need careful handling. DMSO accelerates absorption and can create a burning sensation on contact. Gentamycin is an antibiotic that is usually used with cats and dogs, but is known to affect hearing. So is never used with working dogs.

Our local vet Tara Timppson has recommended an alternative, Atroban 11% EC which we are about to try.
Approved for use directly on beef cattle, lactating and non-lactating dairy cows and calves, horses, sheep, goats, swine and poultry. For control and aid in the control of; horn, face, stable, house, horse, and black flies and mosquitoes, gnats, mange mites, scabies mites, ticks, lice, sheep keds, ear ticks, northern fowl mites and mange. Active ingredient is Permethrin which you may have come across if your children have ever had head lice.


A 16oz bottle costs about $16 I will keep you posted on how well this works.

By Adrian Stewart

I know it sounds far fetched but it can be done...the idea was born out of a children's corner activity that we organised at the recent 2005 AlpacaMania Show.

Basically, the idea was to create an activity that children would enjoy while visiting an alpaca show.

What I discovered some weeks before the show is that the local Grange co-op sell a bird nesting product for $4.99. What you get for your money is a plastic bag containing a wad of fibre stuffed inside a piece of netting and a length of string to hang it up in your garden or back yard.

We tracked down all the necesary materials:

The stretchy netting is the stuff used by butchers and is available from The Sausage Maker Inc netting roll size 16 costs $9.99 for 50 feet. Each nesting material kit needs 6 inches.



The string and plastic bags were pretty straight forward to source.



The children loved stuffing a hand full of the fibre into the netting and pushing the stuffed roll and string into a plastic bag.

The final touch was to staple a printed sheet about the nesting activities of birds onto the bag.



In the end we decided to give the nesting kits away as a promotional item. The children really enjoyed handling the alpaca fibre and creating something useful they could take away with them.

Now personally I would sooner give visitors a lasting positive alpaca experience that costs about 50 cents than try and sell the nesting kits for $5 but the choice is yours....

By Adrian Stewart

When comparing alpaca fibre samples it can sometimes be difficult to spot the real differences. Of course an experienced breeder or judge can feel the difference between 15 microns and 18 microns. But for the rest of us it isn't always so easy. So here is one solution to help get a better idea of what is going on with your alpaca fleece.








The magnifier costs about $40 from Staples and has been really useful.

By Adrian Stewart

We wake up to a complete white out.
Everything has been covered in frost. Time to check all the alpaca water troughs and make sure they are free from ice. The main trough has electrical heating so thats okay.
But the smaller drinking troughs are all frozen and in some cases the water lines are also frozen.

This is much colder than last year.





By Adrian Stewart

Last time we were worming the alpacas we used an ordinary syringe, Tara Timpson our local vet had ordered an oral dosing syringe which has now arrived.

Here is the new syringe pictured next to the one we used to use. You can clearly see the extended nozzle, we have yet to use it in anger with our alpacas.....



By Adrian Stewart

Today we gave Vitamin D shots to all the alpaca cria born this year and last year. Now the dark skies are here it is important to maintain Vitamin D.

In talking with our local vet Tara Timpson I discover this is the time of year (December to March) that there appears to be a seasonal incidence of low phosphorous related to Vitamin D production. She occasionally sees hypophosphotemia especially when related to Vitamin D deficiency, usually alpacas manufacture this themselves when there is plenty of sunlight.

Tara tells me there is some debate whether the problem is due to a decreased ability in alpacas ability to absorb dietary vitamin D or synthesize endogenous Vitamin D.

The feed we have milled also contains a Vitamin D supplement. So I confident we have this issue covered.

By Adrian Stewart

After much digging and the use of old railway sleepers (sorry railroad ties!) that were fence posts when we arrived last year we have now finally created our easy to use poo pile.










Tipping in is easy and scooping out with the tractor is just as easy.

Meanwhile the whole pile rots down with the aid of some "red wrigglers" a type of worm which Jo adds and which accelerate the breakdown.

By Adrian Stewart

Mac and I have been busy all over the place while the autumn sun shines. Clearing fence lines and stacking all the debris in piles until we can burn again in February. I try to take a picture of Mac for the Blog, for some reason he insists on looking serious...






By Adrian Stewart

Several of you have asked how different the latest version of Norm Evans; Alpaca, Field Manual is from the first Edition. Well here is the answer from the man himself.

Adrian,

The 2nd. or revised addition is about 40% new info with changes made
on about 80 pages. It is a paragraph here and there as I learn more
current information.

Dr. Evans







Here once again is the link if you want to buy a copy:


Useful Items now have the book for $105.00

By Adrian Stewart