Yorkshire Alpaca Group show

What a fantastic weekend we've had, Saturday morning was an early start as we were heading off to the YAG (Yorkshire Alpaca Group) Show at Thirk.   

It was actually the first show I've actually managed to get to this year, thanks to Jan & Phil at Castleside Alpacas who were on bottle feeding duties for me, and to all our family and friends who helped us on the day.

We were taking a show team of 6, 3 boys and 3 girls in four difference classes.  I'm always much more relaxed after the inspection, despite checking everyone microchips (and bits) the day before and taking our own chip reader which found said chips, I'm always paranoid there might be a problem.  It's probably down to the first ever show we went to, an alpaca we had bought had been registered with the wrong chip number so we couldn't show her.

Anyway first in for us was the grey girls, we had two in the Intermediate Female class, Lily and Strawberry Hill.  My mum had the pleasure of taking Lily in and I had strawberry.  Both girls were impeccably behaved, and first place went to strawberry and second to Lily.  They both received fantastic comments from judge Mary-Jo Smith who then awarded Strawberry Grey Female Champion and Lily Reserve Champion. 

Strawberry Hill 

Lily

 

Next in was the 'Man' himself Sunburst, he was up against two boys I'd not seen before so I had no idea what the competition was like, but I know how much I rate him and four different judges have rated him before so no pressure Sunburst!

 

Mary-Jo obviously liked him too, he's not been judged by her before and all judges are different but he was 1st Adult Grey Male and then in after a tense build up, Grey Male Champion.  That's five championships he has now.

 

Sunburst

 

Next in the ring was Ankha, Brown Intermediate female, and as usual Ankha got slightly bored whilst waiting for Mary-Jo to judge the rest of the class and kept wanting to sit down.  Whoop whoop, first place and another glowing summing up and again she went on to win Brown Female Champion.  That was her 3rd Championship so she has now matched the show record of her full sister Meketaten!  The commentator Shaun Daniels wasn't very hot on his Egyptian (Ankhesenamun was the third daughter of Queen Nefertiti - and Nefertiti is Anka's mum) and so made me pronounce her name over the microphone - I didn't like doing that! 

Ankhesenamun

 

We didn't take any Fawns or 'Lights' so we had a little break before the whites.  We had taken two Intermediate boys, Thor and Inglefield Linus who was born here on livery, and has always been treated as one of our own (we actually co-own him with Hilary Cross).

Whites are always a tough one and in a class of 12 we didn't really know what to expect, Hilary took in Linus and I had Thor (Paul was supposed to be taking him in but had vanished!).  When Mary-Jo did her initial inspection I thought she had discounted Thor and Linus was behind me so I didn't really see what happened there.

After a lengthy and thorough assessment both Linus and Thor were pulled forwards into the front six, now I was getting hopeful, Linus was first and Thor second, but would they stay that way?!  Yes they did, how impressive was that. I was so proud.

Not only was Linus 1st but he then went on to win white Male Champion - wow!!  In her summing up of the Champions Mary-Jo also said that it was a close call with Thor almost getting the Reserve but she would have liked to have seem him grown out a little more.

Linus

Thor

 

We were so pleased with our days rosette haul we were buzzing all the way home, what a fantastic way to end the show season!