BREEDING
‘ALPACA CHAT’
BAS National judge and breeder Mary-Jo Smith, Bozedown Alpacas, tells us about her alpaca highlights and offers some helpful advice to help you improve your herd and prepare for the biggest event in the BAS showing calendar. What has been your highlight, or have there been several, as an alpaca breeder? There have been several highlights in my career as an alpaca breeder! Number one has to be my good fortune to experience three trips to Peru to select alpacas. Each trip brought new challenges in finding the right alpacas for our herd but also in meeting and spending time with the indigenous Quechua people. Judging the National show in 2016 also makes the top of my highlight list along with being invited to Canada to judge a show. I am from Canada but all my alpaca experience is from my time in the UK and I was excited and honoured to travel home to judge.
What made you decide to become a judge?
After being involved with breeding alpacas for around eight years it was time for a new challenge and another way to learn and improve on my alpaca skills, so I thought I would give it a go. When I first started on the courses I didn’t think judging was something I wanted to do but felt it was a challenge to see if I could attain my judge’s ticket. Placing the alpacas in order of quality was not an issue, I had plenty of experience with this on our farm, however public speaking was not a favourite of mine and I found oral reasoning a class challenging, to begin with, to make it sound fluid and educational. However, after some experience I found that I enjoyed my time in the ring and love the opportunity and privilege of being able to look through everyone’s alpacas and hopefully give positive but informative feedback.
What makes a top quality alpaca and what qualities do you want to see in the BAS National 2022 Supreme Champions?
I certainly have a picture of my ideal alpaca in my head and I am looking forward to seeing how much closer we are to achieving this when I judge the National this year. I will be looking for an alpaca that is true to type, well balanced and has near perfect conformation. The alpaca will hopefully grab my attention as it walks into the ring and then upon opening the fleece, I will be looking for an alpaca that is carrying a fine fleece for age, with excellent density, brightness/ lustre and handle and will be uniform in colour and fineness. I will be looking for uniformity, not only within the staple/lock but also across the animal along with producing a fantastic fleece length. Not much: just an alpaca carrying a balance of all the traits we want for a beautifully finished garment!
What makes judging the BAS National special?
Being able to judge at the National is a special experience all round! Not only do we get the opportunity to judge the best alpacas from across the UK but we get to judge a show that is set up to be the best! The venue is excellent, the show committee works hard to make sure the alpacas are being judged in ideal conditions, with a dry, fantastic sized ring and brilliant lighting. As judges we don’t have to worry about show conditions and making sure the alpacas have equal opportunity for judging conformation or lighting, all we have to worry about is judging the alpacas and placing them in the correct order! Judging the BAS National show is certainly a highlight in our judging career and it is an honour to be asked to judge. I am especially looking forward to judging the males this year and seeing what everyone has been producing over the last couple of years. Continued on next page >>
16 Alpaca #90 YEARBOOK
