Llama Biography #21: Autumn Hill's Inali

I have to admit it, Inali was one of my favorite llamas.  If only he had been a girl I would've been set for life!

Fuzzy boy!

When we got our new herdsire, Randallama's Cherokee, in 2004, we bred him to a bunch of our females that fall.  Alder Crest April Showers was one of those females.  April is pretty much my favorite llama, so I was excited to have another baby from her.

April, Inali's dam.

Cherokee, Inali's sire.

When the fall of 2005 came around, we had two Cherokee crias (Trillium and Catastrophie) born in late September.  Just three days after Catastrophie was born, I came home to find a baby running around with April.  As I was walking from the house out to the barn I kept hoping that it was a girl, but of course it turned out to be a boy!  But he was adorable!  April has a good track record of throwing babies with big bone and heavy fiber, and Inali got all of it!  He is built just like her.

Just a few hours old.

Mom and baby.

Fuzzy boy growing up!

Such a ham!

Trillium sold right after her first show in 2006, so Inali became my show boy for the year.  He didn't do great in halter because he was pretty small (although he did get a few 3rd places in large classes at the Indy Open and Llama Showcase), but by the time the 4-H fair came around he was doing great in performance!  We won Grand Champion Senior Performance, Grand Champion Showmanship, and Grand Champion Costume at the Shelby County Fair.  Unfortunately our show season was cut short, as Inali sold at the Llama Showcase show and went to his new home in northern Indiana shortly after the 4-H fair.

Shortly after being shorn.

Inali has a wonderful home where he is loved and spoiled.  He actually lives with a bunch of horses.  I went back a year after I sold him to shear him, and it was scary how much he looked like his mom!

Inali (now affectionally called Chewy) with his horse buddy.

New Llamas!

I've been putting off writing this blog post for awhile, as I just couldn't think of anything to write.  But then it hit me, I haven't talked about my new llamas!

Last fall I made the decision to find Mr. T a new home.  He just wasn't meshing with me or the herd, and I didn't think it was fair for him to be picked on all the time.  Luckily a friend of mine was interested, so she's getting T this spring and I'm getting a breeding to her gorgeous male for Kara next spring!

With T gone, I realized I had room for another llama!  I've been thinking about adding a new guard llama since I moved to New York.  April certainly isn't getting any younger (she'll be 21 years old in a month!), and I'd like to have a replacement sooner rather than later.  So I started the search for a guard llama.  Surprisingly enough, a good guard llama is hard to come by in the east!  A former customer of mine happened to have a few females for sale, two of which seemed to have guard potential.  The dark brown girl caught my eye, and I decided to make her mine!  So I'd like to introduce Colby, our new guard llama!  And the best part, she's going to be bred to Autumn Hill's Rainier in May, for a 2016 cria!  I'm very excited to have one of Rainier's first babies on my farm!  My husband wants me to start a line of guard llamas in my breeding herd, so Colby (and hopefully her cria) may just be the beginning of that.  Since she's getting bred this spring, she probably won't join the herd until August or September.

As if one new llama wasn't enough, I decided to go all out and look for a new show girl.  Kara will get bred next spring, so this will likely be her last show season.  Ralph isn't real happy about being shown recently, so I need someone new!  I asked around at a lot of different farms, but finally went back to a farm I've been dying to have a llama from...Mark Smith Llamas from Indiana.  I've always admired his animals (usually from behind them in the show ring!), and was determined to finally have one of my own.  I love the males that he has (in fact, I bought Kara's mom Bluff partly because she was a Tuna Catcher daughter), and was thrilled to find a young female who is a Mystery's Timone daughter and Tuna Catcher granddaughter!  So I'd like to introduce MSF Regal Princess (I really need to come up with a better nick-name though!), my new show girl and future breeding llama!  I'm just thrilled with her, and can't wait to see her in person next month!  I'm hoping to performance train her this year.  I wish I could get her to more shows, but it looks like its just going to be the NY State Fair this year.  More next year I hope!