We took a small team of six alpacas to the Mount Pleasant show last weekend, all progeny of Leaenna Armani.

Pictured above are Haylilla Kokoti (brown) and Haylilla Monaco (Black) they both won first place as intermediate females in their colour classes, then Kokoti went on to win Reserve Champion female competing against all other colours – this is a wonderful result for such a dark coloured alpaca.

Haylilla Puzzle our leopard appaloosa stud male won Best Fancy of show.

Haylilla Mr Bingley won first place as intermediate brown male.

Haylilla Jakatta won second place as junior black male and Haylilla Ecuador won second place as intermediate black male.

Well timed rainfall a few days prior to the show enabled their fleeces to display a clean, soft handle making it a real pleasure to show this lovely group of animals.

Two of our alpaca wethers, Rayban and Emelio, recently went to a new home and got straight to work guarding a flock of sheep.

Only days after arriving, they witnessed their first birth. Rayban and Emelio both behaved in a gentle, inquisitive and protective manner towards the little lamb and it’s mother.

Baby lamb clearly loves his alpaca buddies!

Little Pandora has grown into a beauty. We expect she will part of our show team in the near future. Her fleece is a very unusual solid grey roan colour and she is super fine like her mum.

A very welcome addition to our herd, Leaenna Armani throws another spotty boy, this time from Fleur De Lys Sugar and Spice.

We didn’t know what to expect. Before shearing Patchouli appeared to be a white faced brown alpaca with a few light grey spots. After shearing shows her wonderful mottled grey and brown fleece with dark brown and light grey spots, just beautiful!

Haylilla Emporio and Haylilla Bandito impatiently waiting to get their fleeces off.

The days are hot, the grass seeds are prickly and there is a lot of unhappy humming from these little guys.

Without their long fleeces they will be even harder to tell apart – We’ve got 12 of these little ones with only subtle differences between them.

We are so pleased with our black Armani girl Little Black Dress who won Supreme black fleece at the Colour Classic show last weekend, she also came first in the intermediate black female class and won best black progeny with her brother Giorgio.

We brought home three firsts in progeny classes, winning also with Jolimont Tiberio in the brown class (Haylilla Chinchilla teamed up with Ambersun’s Midas Touch 2) and Ambersun Futuris won progeny in the white class (Haylilla Jazzman teamed up with Ambersun’s Infusion).

It’s great to see our co-owned stud sires making such a consistent contribution to the improvement of our herd.

Haylilla Lovely sired by Jolimont Tiberio also won a first in the intermediate grey class. Surprise of the day was Haylilla Chandon winning her class in the Intermediate medium/dark fawn, then going on to win best medium/dark fawn female. This is a wonderful result, as Armani cria – in all colours, are proving to be of an exceptionally high standard. His first appaloosa progeny, from Ambersun, are having their debut show at the Victorian Colourbration on 15-17^th August, we are really looking forward to seeing these little spotties!

We have been very fortunate to bring this 17 year old gentleman to spend his final years at Haylilla Alpacas.

Othello is a beautiful fine fleeced black huacaya, and the grand sire of many of our show winning cria. He will still be working, albeit less frequently than our younger stud males.

Photo shows him recently shorn – as a proud upstanding herd sire.

This little roan girl made my birthday very challenging.

We arrived home from work to find her mum in labour and in obvious distress.

Upon examination we found the baby cria positioned with both her head and front legs facing backwards in the uterus – there was no way she could be delivered without help.

So rather than getting dressed up to go out to a birthday dinner, I clipped my nails, scrubbed up and with plenty of lube manouvered her long neck around in the very tight space to get her head out so she could  breathe. Next I managed to free one front foot. Finally the vet arrived and repositioned her other front foot  to enable her to be delivered. Whew!

Very hard work, very stressful but what a wonderful result. Mum and baby are doing really well.

Welcome to the world little Haze.