Ok, so sometimes things just work out better than you could have planned. If you’ve read our description of Gold’s Kalara, you know we think the world of her: great SHIP scores, follicle density of 73.75, S/P ratio of 14.8 to 1, AFD of 20, sweet personality, hey, what’s not to like? So, when it came time for Kalara’s first breeding, we had to find just the right male. So we looked at herdsires all across the country (I still have an Excel file with data on 50+ of the best herdsires in the US). One of the half dozen finalists was Whistling Pines Bold Ruler, whose sire was SBS Crown Prince and whose dam was a Mont Blanc daughter. His EPDS, biopsy and histogram data describe an extremely uniformly fibered male with outstanding density and fineness.
So, browsing through Openherd one day, we discover that Roy Anderson, of Anderson Acres Alpacas, has Kalara’s dam, Kamira (who we’d admired for a while) for sale and she’s pregnant with a Bold Ruler cria! “Oh. OK. So where did we put Roy’s number?”
And that’s the story of how Kamira (and unborn Bold Prince) came to live at our house. And the story of how we ended up with a spectacular male cria with Black Beau, Kahuna, Crown Royale, Arizona Sage and Mont Blanc genetics.
Prince was born at exactly 11 months of gestation, weighing 20 lbs and ready to go. He was standing and nursing within a few minutes of being born, after which he went and greeted every alpaca in the female herd. And tried to nurse on them!
Prince loves almost EVERYTHING; he loves all the alpacas; He loves people (even strangers); he loves the horses ; he loves going through doors and coming back in the door he just went out . He even loves being weighed; he’ll usually walk over to and step onto the scales without being haltered. Sometimes he gets on the scales while we are weighing another alpaca, just to help out. The only thing he seems not to like is alpaca feed pellets. So we are currently carefully weaning him (he’s 90 lbs) hoping that he stays healthy and that his fleece doesn’t get tender.
Prince has an incredible fleece; lots and lots of long, integrated locks with great luster and soft, cool, slick handle. We’re looking forward to seeing how he does in the 2023 fleece competitions.