Re: [AlpacaTalk] Re: Let them eat cake.Last response by Libby
Hello Heather,
Good grief. Next thing you'll be accusing me of trying to sell breedings
from that catalog!!!!?
You mean someone reads that thing??!! Yahoo!!!! (Okay, just kidding.)
I'm not lying, Heather. We've been breeding alpacas for over 15 years and
no, we didn't show for years and yes, we rarely won for years when we did
begin showing. I too cried when I won our first ribbon, our first blue
ribbon and our first championship. (I bleed red blood. I cry real tears. I
fart...well, let's not go THERE!!!) By the way, it's NOT easy to admit our
mistakes and I don't know why this is so important to you. The reality is
that most breeders go through a "learning curve" especially in the days
before e-mail and websites. There are exceptions..
farms take their time and investigate and buy only the best. I was too
"taken" by alpacas to "learn" before I bought and it was love at first
site and I didn't do it the "right" way. But in the end, the long journey
turned out okay.
As for our herdsire catalog...okay, I'll take the bait one time. I know
better...I should resist but here goes... You can't tell by ages when we
bought the males in the catalog if they were purchased. If animals were
imports with ages of 1993 or 1996, it doesn't mean we owned them or showed
them. Males like Dracula and Don Juan and Plantel were imported but others
bought them first, not us. We bought them later. We didn't own Dracula
and Don Juan until around 1999 (Dracula) or early 2000's (Don Juan). I
believe we bought Plantel from the importers in 1999 but not AT the
import. Year later, I think.Never showed any of them in halter except Don
Juan when he was nearly 15 years old!!! (honest) Not sure exactly when
but if it's truly important to you, I'll look up exactly when we bought
these males.
I believe the first alpacas we showed were in 1998 or 1999 yet we bought
our first alpacas in 1993 and yes, we lost a lot more ribbons than we won
for years!! Not sure of the exact date of our first show as I didn't
anticipate this conversation ten years ago!! White Gold was one of the
first alpacas we showed (probably not the first one but one of the first
ones) and he was born in 1997 so he would have been shown in 1998 at the
earliest. Might have been one or two before that. Jeronimo and Accipiter
were purchased with their dams and they would have shown in 1999 or 2000.
We didn't own Quetzal until 2000 or 2001 and he was born in 1997. Males
born in 1999 (a couple in the book) weren't shown, if they were shown,
until 2000 or 2001 and yes, they did well or they wouldn't be in the
catalog. We don't put pet males in the catalog so the ones that lost
aren't in it! You no doubt noticed that the animals with MFI in their
name were born well into the 2000's. (Are there any before 2000? Since
you're investigating me again, you might know the answer better than I do
as I sit here.) I also learned the hard way that HOW you show alpacas is
as important as what you show.
Why is it so hard for you to believe that like any other farm, we made
mistakes and also did things wrong and right? We learned even when no one
wanted to help us learn by going to shows, volunteering at fleece shows
and in other ways. It took time and looking at hundreds and hundreds of
animals and fleeces to figure it out. (Okay...so I'm not that smart!) The
fact that one or two males won in 1998 or 1999 or 2000 doesn't make me a
liar in regard to what I said but it sure felt good at the time to finally
succeed (although I suspect the first "wins" were offspring of females we
bought like Accipiter and Jeronimo and I can't take the credit except for
picking out their incredible dams.)
Why is it so important for you to try to catch me in some kind of a
mistake? Did you actually go to our catalog to try to FIND a mistake??
Well, let me put your mind at ease. I make mistakes all the time,
Heather, but I do not lie. (But I AM incredibly happy to hear that you
have the catalog! Yahoo!)
So...we raised alpacas for at least 5 or 6 years before I began to show
and then it was only a handful of animals and we seldom won until the
early 2000's...with a few exceptions. We seldom won but we did from time
to time in the early years of our showing. It wasn't until the early
2000's that our program took off and it wasn't until I learned what made a
truly good alpaca and began to understand which fleeces cross best. It
wasn't until we met a few breeders with high-quality animals in the late
1990's when I got a real appreciation for what made a great fleece. Took
years. Even now, sometimes we win, sometimes we don't. We do our best,
just like everyone else.
Enough back and forth on this, eh? No more mud slinging, okay? If you
have to do it some more, let's take it off line where people don't have to
read this. Okay?
Please be well and happy.
Libby
Libby Forstner
Magical Farms, Inc.
Litchfield Ohio
(330)667-3233
Heather Zeleny <alpacatalk@westwind
Sent by: AlpacaTalk@yahoogro
11/11/2008 07:35 PM
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Re: [AlpacaTalk] Re: Let them eat cake.Mary responds to Libby
Oh Libby, you crack me up! That's a good one! I was just leafing
through your lovely and very expensive to produce Herdsire catalog. It
looks to me as though you've always done very well, from the beginning.
Nearly all of those animals in that catalog have MFI as part of their
registered name. These are sires born as far back as 1996, with show
results for some going back to 1999 as far as I've noticed, maybe 1998.
I don't know how many sows there were back in the old days. We only
started 10 years ago, back when AOBA was just forming. We weren't in it
in the pre-AOBA days. And AOBA only set up their own show and judging
system in 2001. So finding show results pre-2001 is going to be tough!
Heather
On Nov 11, 2008, at 12:56 PM, libby@alpacafarm.
> Hello Mary and Robin,
>
> When we started out 15 years ago, we were a very small farm and we
> spent
> the next 15 years borrowing and I couldn't "buy" a ribbon for years
> so I
> think I do recall what it's like although after 15 years and lots of
> hard
> work, we've made progress.
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