We think this boy is the darkest 'silky' type we have seen! His fiber is slick and shiny that it looks and almost feels wet! Even judge Tim Lavan commented that his fiber looked almost like it was wet! He has LOTS of fiber on him, and with a really long staple so that it droops somewhat when he is at his peak length. But don't be fooled by this and think that he is not dense... he has a lot of fiber packed on him! He has white fibers in his blanket but not consistently enough to classify him as a grey in the shows. This was his initial 'hiccup' in the show ring, when they placed him in the brown classes so that he had to endure the disapproval of the judges. We attempted to show him in Bred and Owned but did not find the consistent competition at that time that we desired for him. But, we luckily become more observant of Major's several, easily discernible light spots in his blanket that classifies him as an appaloosa pattern. Shown in the right class and Major ROCKS! His fiber was finally evaluated purely on its exceptional qualities rather than on how it did not fit in the class. From the beginning in the show ring, he was hard to categorized but well appreciated. At his first show, while he was criticized for his white fibers in brown class, he also caught the judge's eye as "so shiny he looked wet". At the 2014 Futurity while showing in the combined multi class, he was brought to the Reserve Champion position, behind the Snowmass Color Champion and before the other exemplary alpacas from farms such as Crescent Moon and Marquam Hill. With the caliber of competition of this show we were proudly aware of Major's placing at the head of the pack clearly recognizing his herdsire material! We absolutely love Major for his easy personality, great looks and fantastic fiber. Being a small farm with very limited breedings each year, Major has had to elbow his way into the breeding program and hasn't had the exposure that he should have. He has darkened the color of the offspring over its dam in every case. When bred to fawns he has made a MF to DB crias. Bred to grey dams he produced grey crias 60% of the time and true black in the remaining 40%. Their fiber have all been fine with long staple and good crimp. His last two crias by fawn dams have been grouped into our show / jr. herdsire category. Since we have decided to keep his son, Gentry, in our herdsire row, Major is available at a very 'nice price' to help him move to another breeding program. He has genetics that could be used in any grey or spotted program. As we have sold Imitation, our last appaloosa dam, we no long have need for a male that could straddle the line of grey and spotted colorations and he really deserves more consideration.

Alpaca Annuals listing comments drew us to Lori when we were looking to build our grey program years ago: "L'Oreal is our farm darling, extremely cute and very inquisitive. She is always the first to come see what's happening or who's visiting. Winning over "the boss" as favorite alpaca was no simple task, she just has one of those personalities and a look to go with it. She has great conformation with VERY FINE fleece, add in a shade of gorgeous dark silver grey and you see why we think she is so special. Lori is a wonderful mom and given us gray and black when bred to gray. At 10, she pronks and plays with the cria, this is no old gal....several more babies are possible from her. She is very healthy and acts like she is 2!" Since then, Lori has made us Merida -- a gem in our grey program and the somehow feel between the cracks as we gathered ourselves up to move to our farm. But this year she has produced a lovely TB girl, Brina, by or champion Major General that we are growing up with high hopes for a breeding future. Now, this dam is retired from breeding.