We are thrilled beyond belief to have a top quality Renaissance Ridge grey herdsire in our lineup! It was a great opportunity for us, and we jumped at it! Donatello has the softest handle--the most uniform, fine fleece... Beautiful dark rose grey coloring---I suspect both classic and modern grey genetics. We plan to put him to work on our best colored females this fall! Yup!--gotta have modern grey in there because his first cria for us is MODERN dark rose grey, and her dam has no grey in her background! Addendum: his second cria for us is also a very dark modern rose grey from a true black female. This is from Julie and Ken Rosenfeld's listing of Donatello: "Donatello has been a treasure in our program. He is a Kit Carson son out of the revered and now deceased Snowmass Silver Star who gave us Snowmass Star Matrix, mom to RR Touchstone, the national brown fleece champ in 2015. She is also mom to Snowmass Enlightenment, who is well recognized in grey breeding circles. Donatello carries the strong conformation of both his parents and we fully suspect that he will deliver the goods on sustained fineness which was seen in both his parents. Sire, Kit Carson has a histogram of 22.5/ 4.0/ 17.6 and a comfort factor of 96.1% at age 6. Dam, Silver Star was still 23 micron at age 10! He has a very superior handle and uniformity to his fleece which would be commendable in any color, but is particularly notable for grey. ...[the genes carried by RR Donatello and sire, RR Kit Carson have been]...the backbone of our breeding program in a line that started with grandsire Aussie Gun's n Roses, RR Guns Kit Carson and now Donatello. ...If you're breeding for grey he's your man." Follicle Biopsy 55.1 (watt) http://www.renaissanceridgealpacas.com/BIOPSIES/Microsoft%20Word%20-%20RR%20Donatella.doc.pdf 2014 OFDA Histogram: 17.0/ 3.2/ 18.84/ 100 2015 OFDA Histogram: 20.07/3.98/18.87/98.05/90.0 He's on our farm in the north San Francisco Bay area now--Alpacas of Marin!

Our "next generation". Snowmass Midnight Sun had his work cut out for him to cover one of Guns n Roses best grey daughters. The early results are in and he was most definitely up to the task! Venezia took blue the only time shown, She is conformationally correct with a very very dense, very uniform fleece over an expansive neck to belly blanket. Her follicle testing confirms her fleece attributes, as done by Ian Watt: Follicle density: 53.8/mm2 Secondary:Primary Follicle Ratio: 11.8:1 In-skin Primary follicle diameter: 26.0 micron SD 3,7 In-skin Secondary follicle diameter: 21.5 micron SD 3.1 (The differential in micron between primary and secondary micron, being under 5, is excellent, as are the SDs in the 2 populations!) We bred her to RR Donnatello, a very promising junior herdsire.