Time To Celebrate – Little Man Makes It!

Little Man aka Windrush Peruvian Tonka

 

To 30 lbs that is!

 

Clarissa’s cria who we fondly call Little Man has finally passed the 30 lb. mark.  When he was born in October he weighed in at only 11.5 lbs.  Little Man had a slow start on the growth curve, sometimes only gaining 0.1 lbs in a day compared to the other crias who were happily gaining 0.5 – 0.75 lbs. per day.

 

Clarissa has been a good milk producer in the past and so we are not sure why Little Man was so slow to grow.  We increased Clarissa’s feed to help her produce more milk, which did help a little but still reaching 30 lbs. took a long while for Little Man.  I guess when you start off tiny the road to size is an uphill one.

 

We do not expect that Little Man will ever be a big alpaca.  His dam Clarissa is on the small side as is his half sister Willow.  We are still waiting conformation on Little Man’s sire; he is either an on time offspring of Travesura’s Altiplano Treasure or a premature offspring of Windrush Moonlight Surprise.  Just looking at his bright, bright white fleece and feeling it’s almost waxy handle I suspect that Treasure may well be Little Man’s sire.  Treasure has won best brightness awards in fleece shows as well as blue ribbons and championship ribbons in both fleece and halter.  As Little Man’s body style develops he is looking more like Treasures stocky, compact stature than Moonies taller, longer frame.  We will just have to wait and see what his DNA tells us.

 

We did delay in sending Little Man’s blood card in to the Alpaca Registry for DNA testing, only because we could not decide on a registered name for him.  Little Man is a broad chested, heavy boned young man, a compact alpaca in miniature and we were not certain that to give him a registered name of Windrush Little Man was the right thing to do.  Thankfully Regina Dart of Llano Soleado Alpacas came to our rescue, when she said Little Man looked like an alpaca Tonka toy and so that is how Little Man has come to be registered as Windrush Peruvian Tonka (but he will always be Little Man to us!).

 

Rosemary