Sweet Sixteen

We are recently returned from a tip up to see our girl at SuperSuris in Green Bluff.  Sweet Sixteen will officially be ours (via lease) on December 1 – something about which we are beside ourselves with excitement.  We are taking part in a lease agreement with our friends at SuperSuris which will allow us to begin to build our herd without the six-figure investment typically required.   We will lease her for a year, during which she is expected to deliver a cria some time in August. 

I like to refer to this as rent-a-womb. 

We’re leasing her long enough for her to produce offspring, which will belong to us free and clear at the termination of the lease.  Better than that, at the end of the lease we have the option to purchase the mother and apply our lease payments to date to the price.  At the end of this, we plan to own one adult Suri alpaca and her baby.  If there is a better way to get into the field of alpaca farming, I don’t know it.

Sweet Sixteen is the girl we’ve selected out of the nearly two hundred at SuperSuris.  She’s a sweetheart with good lineage and a family history of easy-going alpacas with good fiber qualities.  And she’s a good mom too.

Oddly enough, it seems that Sweet Sixteen has figured out this relationship.  Yesterday I came out into her field (with all the other new mothers) to say hello.  After she got used to me, she walked calmly over and placed her head on my shoulder.  I rubbed her neck and she made happy noises and pushed into me.  Today she walked right up to me and let me put a halter on her, no protest.  She then stood still, leaning into me again, while Dick, one of the owners of SuperSuris, trimmed her toenails. 

She definitely seems to know something’s up and that it relates to us.  She hums contentedly whenever any of us is around, and she always has a kiss ready for our kids when they visit.  It will be one short year before the relationship that she already senses is completely settled, but in the mean time we continue to think of her as “our” girl.