The secret within.

There is one thing that can never be denied about the Mighty Patou herd. It is a herd of colour. Colour is our bag. We are coloured. Mainly brown, for it is brown that we love, brown that we desire, brown that we endlessly strive for, brown is indeed our own personal Nirvana. No not the rock band, but Nirvana in the Buddhist sense of the word; 'perfect peace of the state of mind that is free from craving, anger, and other afflicting states', I think in other words, to achieve 'Nirvana' means you're pretty chuffed with yourself. So when we have a herd of absolutely top notch brown alpacas to rival any in the world we will have achieved Nirvana and immense chuffedness.

We do also have a very nice line in black alpacas and the inevitable bunch of lovely fawns when we don't quite get enough brownness or blackness in the mix, but mainly we are a brown herd. In fact I am quite proud of the fact that we have never bred an alpaca that has turned out lighter than dark fawn. You could almost say that we are a herd that is closed to white or light fawn alpacas. That is, my friends, until quite recently.

You see dear reader, now lurking within the Mighty Patou herd, in fact white alpacas don't lurk in a dark herd they positively shine out like beacons, so to rephrase, now sticking out like sore thumbs in the Mighty Patou herd are some white alpacas. Not just white alpacas but white female alpacas.

This is Tisbury Alice who is the daughter of Wessex Mateus, a Highlander son. Alice has the lovely solid frame of her father and a dense white fleece. I like her look. Alice also has her grandfathers disposition and is rather highly strung with a penchant to let the spit fly.

Alice had a lovely little dark fawn cria last summer, sired by our very own Columbus. Little Flora  (below) is absolutely gorgeous as you can see. She is almost light brown but not quite there. She also has a little white snout which adds to her general 'cute as a button' appearance. We are so pleased with Flora that Alice will be having another little Clumpmeister later this year.

The other white breeding female that we have now is Tisbury Dilly. Dilly is a maiden female who has actually been here for quite a while as have had her here since she was mated to Columbus last year. She is a Wessex Samurai daughter and we are keen to see what she can produce for us colourwise. Here she is with Alice (just to prove that we do have two and it's not one taken from different angles!).

So there we have it, the Mighty Patou herd is not as coloured as you may have thought.

Just as a way of compromise today though I have added a photograph of my favourite alpaca in the whole wide world, now settled back in with her cria, Runa. Happy days.