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!

RIVER'S CRYSTAL KIERNAN was awarded COLOR CHAMPION AT THE INTERNATIONAL ALPACA ODYSSEY in 2013. Crystal takes first out of all dark female juveniles and color champ out or all dark females. Crystal's fiber already shows Kiernan's super ability to improve his baby's fleece. Crystal has rich brown fiber and impeccable conformation. Her dam is quite tall and as a two year old so is Crystal. Crystal is a big girl and perfectly put together. The judges remarks as to why she chose Crystal for the color champion was her uniformity of fineness and conformation. She commented, "this alpaca has a general lack of guard hair and a consistency of fine soft fiber throughout her entire fleece". The most amazing trait of this girl is her conformation and stature. She was only 10 months with her IAO and California Classic championships. Her fiber is wonderful but so is her body type. She really has it all and could make any breeder another champion with the right breeding. Crystal is now bred to Silver Rose Sentinel of Arapaho Rose Alpacas, a proven dark grey with a long breeding history of champions. Sentinel will improve her EPD for staple length. Sentinel EPD superiority is that he is in the 1% for staple length, and perfect as a pairing with her EPD picture. Crystal was evaluated by Dale Davis in February of 2013 and her remarks were "Lovely body type, good fleece density, good architecture, very soft handle, few guard hairs and consistency of fiber is very good. Her only negative is "the staple length is just a bit less than expected for 8 months, but definitely show material". Herdsire, Kiernan of Saint Andrews progeny have had incredible success in the show ring. Multiple first place halter showings for his progeny at the California Classic in 2012. All solid rich brown juvenile and yearling winners. Crystal has that same winning fiber and can integrate that fiber dynamic as a foundation female for a breeder who is breeding for color. 2014 Fiber Trait EPD Values: Trait Value Accuracy National Rank AFD 0.519 0.436 27813 of 31937 SDAFD -0.006 0.436 17913 of 31937 SF 0.457 0.46 27026 of 31937 %F>30 -0.096 0.466 18670 of 31937 MC -2.431 0.431 31100 of 31937 SDMC -1.385 0.455 31494 of 31937 %M -1.306 0.029 5421 of 31937 MSL -0.927 0.362 24127 of 31937 FW 0.183 0.273 9966 of 31937 BW -0.108 0.086