It’s a funny thing really. Shows are great and all and often an important measuring stick for breeding programs…but there are also undeniably exceptions to that rule. We give you CCNF Reign Dancer, who outside of being the Reserve Champion Brown Huacaya Male at the ’21 AOA National Fleece Show, hasn’t really set the world on fire in the halter shows he’s been to thus far, fairing no better than a 3rd place. To put it quite succinctly: we don’t care. For if you are a seasoned watcher of the US alpaca herd, you will know that animals of RD’s phenotype and quality simply do not grow on vines. The son of TGF Let Freedom Reign (who is the older full sister to our Herdsire, CCNF Reign Maker) and Futurity Champion/JC winner, CCNF Sovereign-Legacy, Reign Dancer has the numbers to back up his story too which may, ironically, be part of the problem he’s had in halter classes: a dark brown fleece monster sporting an 18.5 AFD, 3.2 SD, with a 17.4 CV all just shy of his 2nd birthday is decidedly special. How special you might ask? We bred him to none other than CCNF Capuchin, the dam of Leviathan, Sentinel, Nakia, and Okoye. All of those previous animals have been sired by Reign Dancer’s paternal grandsire, CCNF Elixir. You steal females from the stable of a 3x Futurity Herdsire of the Year, only because you really believe in the new Herdsire. Autumn 2023 Update: While Reign Dancer has only sired two crias so far for us, those two boys are genuinely dynamic. The club of working Herdsires who failed in the test of a proof-of-concept with the first several offspring they sired is a pretty large one: it often takes some trial and error to figure out how best to use a given sire's genetics. That Reign Dancer's two sons, CCNF Bellieveitornot (out of CCNF Bellinda) and CCNF Citadel (out of the aforementioned CCNF Capuchin) are already being pipped for a run in our show team next year, 2 to 3 months shy of their weaning, speaks volumes. Though Rain Dancer came quite close to being sold overseas, that deal never transpired and we have now decided that we are so impressed with his work, that we will retain him for the foreseeable future for use here at CCNF.