Busy weeks of summer

There's been no let up at TOFT this past few weeks with animal deliveries and shows taking up the whole of August. Last week we took a lovely trio of pet males up to North Berwick to fulfil a long standing dream of the new owners. Those boys are going to be spoilt rotten up there in Scotland. Along the way there we dropped off a few females for mating and on the way back picked up a few that had already been mated. All told a round trip of amost 800 miles. No sooner had we got home and we were off via Copenhagen to Oslo to judge the first Norwegian Fleece show- more on that later.I'm sat now in Copenhagen airport writing this and catching up after a fabulous three days in Oslo. Much more on that later. Needless to say we are both looking forward to a solid week on the farm to catch up with our alpacas. It's been a blast these last three weeks but a little downtime is now needed in earnest to recharge.

Boys yo to Scotland....

For a warm if soggy welcome...

Girls back down to TOFT with just enough time to pack and head to Norway to judge the first Norwegian fleece show. We wouldn't have it any other way!!!!!

And back on the ranch... Now you see them ... Now you don't

Hardly had time to unpack my shaving kit after getting back from Germany and we are out in the shed most of Wednesday with Linda, Freya and Rebecca the Vet from Towcester Veterinary practice enrolling six mature males into the Billy No Nacks club. This team are heading off shortly to work as Guardian alpacas in Wales where they will, have no need of their tackle as they hopefully give long and faithful,service to their new owners protect the lambs from predators.

So long fellas.

Toft Alpaca Fibre Herd

Another fine group of young boys go off today to provide their new owner with a great looking fibre herd. Incredible that the fleece statistics of these young men, the quality of their fleece and their inherent genetic fineness would have made them Champions not five years ago. 

The oldest of the males has a micron of 22.2 in his fourth fleece, the intermediate light fawn was 17 microns in his second fleece and the two juniors are under 20. Although micron is not everything in addition all these fibre males exhibit very little guard hair, good density and uniformity throughout their fleece and come for our bloodlines which have  a track record for maintaining quality. There can't be many starter groups of alpacas in the country with such potential to be a productive fibre herd.

Unfortunately for them, they all have  better brothers who will continue to move the Toft Herd on towards Elite whilst they will graze in celibacy and provide their owners with fine yarns for years to come-enjoy.

Happy alpaca owner...

Lovely afternoon yesterday delivering three pet males to a young family in the North East who will have a great time with their new charges. Their three halter trained pet males, a fawn, brown and white are to be renamed Mo, Oz and Ronaldo who will live beyond the Ha Ha and present themselves beautifully to be viewed from the house.
I foresee lots of Janet & John moments for this lovely family and hope they enjoy walking and looking after their pet males.