News from Pucara

Well, we sincerely hope this newsletter finds everyone in good health and enjoying summer. There is enough gloom to go around for anybody who enjoys that but frankly here at Pucara we just work harder to try and increase the possibility of getting luckier. The industry is tougher right now and reading Tim's report below it's easy to understand why. I am so lucky I do not have to endure what he does daily at the bank where he works having to oversee the control of credit. But these hard financial times have been around before, we've survived them and will again. We are seeing less sales but still lots of interest. Jude and I are not yet ready to hide on a beach in Mexico drinking 50 cent Margaritas and gorging on two dollar meals after a hard day surfing....hhmmmmm, then again!!!

We've been busier than lizards as usual on a lot of fronts...the show ring, consultancy, marketing (here and in Europe), sales, judging, and now are full on into the birthing of cria and managing all the summer farm activity as well as reorganising our office.

There is never a dull moment!                       

The Show Ring

I don't think we have ever had a better show season, well at least here in the US. And you may ask why is that so important for you? More than in any other country we have been involved in alpacas, the US seems to rely more on the importance of show results. It's probably because breeders here generally have far less livestock experience and therefore rely on the performanace of a breeder under the scrutiny of judges. It's often misleading but nonetheless we understand the importance and are evolving our branding in the show ring for both breeds, huacaya and suri.Showing gets recognition for the farm and attracts visits to the farm from buyers. It also adds value to lines that did well in the shows.

We creamed it in the suri show ring nationally. After a very good Futurity in Lousiville, Kentucky where we won lots of ribbons that culminated in the White Suri Male Championship, we went on to dominate the National Show in Salt Lake City, UT. In the production classes which identify the country's leading herdsires and dams Pucara Kahuna progeny won every class they were entered in:

Ist, 2nd, 3rd in Bred and Owned Yearling Males

1st in Bred and Owned Yearling Females

1st in Breeders Best Three

1st in Get of Sire

White Male Championship

Reserve White Female Championship

We had breeders suggest to us that this is the best they had ever seen any breeder do at the Nationals!!

We also took seconds in the two toughest male classes in the huacaya show ring. We only took two huacaya! I think we placed behind the champion in both classes. One of these males is a Group Three boy Pucara Beachwood Creek Javier. On that result I think the barns are perhaps one generation or so away from getting more cria into the show ring. It all adds value and recognition.

The Industry

Generally the industry is thriving but that doesn't mean it isn't suffering growing pains. Thank heavens it hasn't gone the way of other livestock industries where in their formation personality and infighting caused the splitting and formation of rival associations. AOBA now has over 4000 members and is still attracting hundreds of leads every month which we buy from the AOBA national office and promote to.

The efforts by AOBA and its mostly voluntary members who work on committees that range from research marketing and showing is amazing. They even lobby the federal government and just recently managed to get alpacas registered as a "livestock" as opposed to an "exotic" species. Why is it so important? It affects grants, local government zoning for alpaca farms and institutional recognition.

The amount of time Jude and fellow senior judges spend getting the judging criteria right is amazing and for me at times frustrating. They are doing a huge job on making showing standards reflect commercial fiber value often with opposition from less credentialled folk who believe they are disenfranchised by that (yes, they breed poor fibered animals!!!) and its the same folks who will not support a breed standard! Jude right now helps run national fleece clinics for judges (one week long sessions), sits on the AOBA Judges' Advisory Committee and is also a judge liaison to the Show Ru;es Committee...plus does about ten shows a year judging!!!! Has any one seen her lately????

The marketplace

Almost daily I endure questions from less capable breeders about the marketplace and sales. Right now more often than not its negative and I say "how the bloody hell do you expect that we'd fly in the face of the national economy? ......" More often than not the people who are complaining are those that have taken no interest in the industry other than feeding and breeding their alpacas, who have never marketed their alpacas properly and whose breeding philsophy is based on using their own unimproved gelding quality males or swapping with someone elses so it doesn't cost anything. These are the people who harp about getting their backside kicked in the showring, who blame AOBA for a lack of advertising and marketing (it's the same people who never buy the leads to promote to from the national office!!!the same leads created by the AOBA television ads etc!!!) and who blame the economy because they get no farm visits.

Well, I try and help but I have little sympathy...effort equals reward.

For sure it's tough right now. We think we are working three times as hard to procure half the sales. But half the sales is better than none!!! We are right now selling a lot of breedings, especially to our suri boys because of the acclaim from the National Show ring and are now also seeing demand for our huacaya herdsire stable 

As you all know Tim and I promote seminars in Oregon and Ohio and occasionally in other locations. We slotted more for this year but as expected attendances are down a little, but those newbies who come are energetic and wanting to participate in ownership but are finding it harder to round up funds. We now have some barn females to sell, mostly those that gave birth to female cria and have weaned them and are pregnant again. I'm confident we'll move them but the price point may have to be a little lower than the purchase point. One area which is helping enquiry for sales is the amount of work Jude and I are doing on farm herd consultancy. We basically review peoples animals and suggest a breeding plan. It's great that people are finally waking up that this stuff has to be planned and we are in a unique position of being able to provide the help.

Auctions....... I hate them...the rich man's lazy way of selling alpacas. In other livestock industries you have stud auctions and commercial auctions. Alpaca breeders seem to think everything is a stud animal and should sell at a high price. Once upon a time that was almost true. However there is a huge diversity now in the genetic merit of alpacas. Now there are auctions nearly every weekend run by people who take a large commission on a consignment basis where no screening is done of the animals entered. Breeders who have no branding and who have poor breeding habits are putting unimproved alpacas in these auctions and getting low prices and taking the money even though if they had marketed well and sold from the farm would have achieved a higher return without having to pay the commission. The problem is many of these folk don't know how to market or simply work another job and can't make the time so they take a discounted value on their animal. These sorts of auctions make up 80% of the auction place. They hurt prices. Often there are 80 alpacas in an auction!

What I call the real auctions, or the stud auctions are those run by our friends at Snowmass Alpacas or Pacific Crest Alpacas. Magical Farms from Ohio also comes to mind. I love these auctions. Its the chance for discerning breeders to pick up elite genetics. These guys dominate in the show ring. They do that because they breed well and don't cut corners. Their prices hold in good or bad times and it doesn't hurt the industry. The answer for the other breeders. Get help. Breed better. Start marketing!

Jude and I have our first alpacas to be auctioned in the Extreme Herdsire Progeny auction and the Private Collection auction. The reason they are in is that they are well run East Coast auctions where we want to extend the fanfare of Pucara Kahuna as the country's leading light suri herdsire. We hope to get the highest average which attracts a 1% bonus of auction sales and because we know there is interest in the particular animals all which won either championships or first place ribbons at the big nationals shows. We're solidifying the brand.

On the Farm

You name it, it's happening. All the summer jobs. Haying, running more fence, pasture management ( fertilizer, overseeding, rotation, weed control) building new shelter and maintaining all the things a 350 animal 103 acre farm throw at you. Add 100 plus births, breeding and husbandry and summer flies along. This summer I am absolutely office bound. After knee surgery and a bout of chronic planter faciitis and an achilles heel that is playing up after rupturing it many years ago playing pro basketball ( I often wondered why it was called "pro" in Australia when we were lucky to get a free meal let alone a pay check!) I am aging quickly and wondering what ever happened to the "alpaca lifestyle".

I may as well whine because I know I would have been stuck in here anyway trying to keep the website updated, keeping in contact with all our clients, designing our herdsire catalogue that will be out in two weeks, plus trying to procure sales. Add the many email campaigns I write, managing the farm manager and the crew etc etc and you get the picture. Its been great welcoming Sharon Schuur to our office and we are just now seeing results as she develops an understanding of the farm and industry and a lessening of Jude's work load. We run this place on the smelly of an oily rag. It saves you folks heaps because unlike many farms we do not charge for things like worming, vaccinations, toe nail clipping, weighing etc. It's all included in the agistment, so having Sharon helps us be better communicators with our clients.

And indeed at last I have been able to add to the Barn pages a PDF of the current herd lists of each barn giving up to date birthing and pregnancy info. It took months to work out why we couldn't do this and finally my Aussie web guy and I worked out my PC had a weird bug. This list will be updated every month. It's also Sharon's job as soon as cria are born to photograph them and ensure the relevant barn is informed by email. It takes a little while to get the webpages updated so that will be a little later than the email most times. Also every month expect an updated herdlist to be emailed to you all.

I'll take a second here too to thank Bob Miller and Paul Fiore from Barn Three for helping getting us up to speed. We've not always been as quick to communicate as we could but these guys help us make it happen and assist us not only in getting it right but also how the info will look as it is delivered. Often its a case of our workload  that we were slow but you will see a far more immmediate relay of information from here on in...."won't we Sharon?".

Enjoy the summer.

Al....and Jude

Beachwood Creek Farm

So, how does one keep a positive outlook in a negative economic cycle? Believe me; with the flood of negative news coming at me daily, I struggle to keep from being sucked-in by all of the uncertainty and media hype. In my daytime job working as a credit officer for a bank I see it all and share a lot of hard times with clients. Some general examples from the economy are as follows:

• Residential Foreclosures and consumer bankruptcies are at an all time high, 1,500,000 foreclosures to date!
• Inflation continues to surge led by record high oil prices.
• Existing home sales fall 2.6% in June to a 10 year low, more than double the expected amount.
• The number of newly laid off people filing claims for unemployment benefits bolted past 400,000 in July as companies trimmed their work forces to cope with a slowing economy and fallout from a collapsed housing market.
• The Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 indexes are down 20% and 19% respectively from their 52 week highs.
• Bank credit tightens in response to record loan losses.
• Banks in jeopardy of failure.
• A pending presidential election.
• Consumer confidence is at a 20 year low.

Given current conditions, is it any wonder why the alpaca industry is experiencing some softness in demand? Regardless of the challenges presented by the present economic cycle, I firmly believe the future belongs to the optimist. And, as our good friends from Pucara often say, “The harder we work, the luckier we get!”

We continue to pursue our marketing initiatives by advertising the seminar series via direct mail and the web. Interestingly, in spite of the economic lull, the inquiries received by AOBA from alpaca enthusiasts who are interested in information about farming/investing are still strong. We enjoyed decent attendance at the May and June Planning For Profit seminars at the farm and are presently working on potential sales with a few of the attendees.

The birthing season for us does not start until late August this year due to the timing of breeding last year. We’ll birth a whole gaggle of cria during August, September and October. Hopefully, production yield and female count will be good….keep your fingers crossed.

We did have a sad experience in Mid May with the untimely death of WG Hershey. Hershey was a bay black female and a pretty decent producer. Last year she gave us a very nice male cria by Amber Adonis (pictured below), which we will enter this fall at the Ohio show.

On the evening May 16th, Hershey began showing signs of imbalance and within 30 minutes was down on her side and completely disoriented. We followed all of the emergency protocols including taking her to a camelid clinic where all measures were administered to bring her around. She was ultimately put down the following day.

The interesting thing about alpacas is the way they deal with weakness. Since alpacas have no natural defense against prey animals other than their ability to run, any sign of weakness in the wild means certain death.

As these animals have evolved, they have adapted their behavior and hide any weakness until the final stand.

This is why we spend so much time observing their behavior while healthy so we have some clue as to the well being when they have a bad day.

This is also why we devote time and training to new breeders.

As you may know, attracting and helping new breeders is a big part of our business strategy. As part of our program, we invite new breeder clients to the farm for hands-on husbandry experience such as shearing, birthing, worming, breeding, etc.

In early June, two of our newest clients, Mike and Lisa Hindman of Mountain Spirit Alpacas in Bristol, TN spent the weekend with us to experience a herd health day. Mike is a retired cardiologist from Columbus and his wife Lisa is an RN and still employed in medical research in Raleigh, NC. They purchased 10 breeding alpacas from us and Pucara last year after attending a seminar.

Both Mike and Lisa took part in the process of weighing, vaccinating, worming and ultra-sounding the alpacas with Mike learning how to administer injections and Lisa recording weights and dosages…it was a very hot day so we were all pretty whipped by the time we finished.

Immediately following the weekend, I received an email from Mike and Lisa expressing how enthused and confident they are about the business and their abilities in managing the animals.

Since last year, Mike and Lisa have been busy completing the build-out of their farm and plan to begin receiving their alpacas sometime this fall and early spring 2009.

I have attached a photo of Mike and Lisa standing with Cosmo.

We wish them all the luck possible and will continue to work with them.

National Alpaca Farm Day will be held again this fall. The purpose of the day is to raise awareness of the alpaca lifestyle and produce revenue. Last year was a real success for many breeders who experienced huge numbers of visitors to their farms. We did not participate last year due to the conflict of the seminar weekend being just prior to the National Farm Day. However, we do plan to participate this year and will post some additional information about our plans as the date approaches.

I’d like to thank Alan for his effort in figuring-out how to post the actual herd status data directly from the Herd Logic software to the Barn pages on their web site. It looks good, is easy to access and understand.

Don't forget we are here any time for a farm visitor to answer any questions.

Tim and Anita