Appletini is exactly what we have been breeding for here at Rare Gem Alpacas. Not only is she stunning to look at with her calico looking face, but pull apart her fleece and you find oodles of bundles of crimpy, shiny, bright-fine fleece. This little girl has expressed every color on the chart, not one pattern-- just speckles and spots from nose to toes! The unique coloring of this cria looks as though the color from her sire's Grand Dam, Chiquita Import, is coming through and producing the rarest of rare gems-- her beautiful colors seems to morph before your eyes!
Appletini is sired by Vintage Cashmere U-Taupe-ia. Taupie's heritage boasts appaloosa genetics on both sides of his lineage with Aussie Rockford out of Hannahruh on his sire's side and Chiquita Import on his dam's side.
Appletini's dam is "Faith", a non-appy lineage vicuna pattern girl known for her dense, but fine fleece with substantial character and nice handle. This pairing has been repeated for a Fall 2017 cria!
2017 Show Update: We just returned from California Classic and are very proud of the Rare Gem herd results. Appletini was part of the show crew along with her brother, Johnny Appy-Seed.
This was Appletini's first show and she was just 6 months (minimum age) to the day at check in. Appletini was entered in two classes and received two ribbons-- a 1st and a 6th. The first place was in Bred and Owned (Dark) in which the rules are pretty straight forward and can include all colors dark including appaloosa. The class was judged 60% fleece and 40% confirmation. Appletini's second class-- Walking Fleece was not as straight forward. This class is judged 100% on fleece. Appletini was originally registered in the class as "Appaloosa", but by AOA rules, she must have 6 distinct spots in her blanket. By color-check day, her blanket was such that distinct spots where only obvious on her face, legs and belly and the color of her blanket was off-the-chart... literally. The decision was made to move her to the "grey" class as there was no obvious alignment for her on the color chart. Upon entering the ring the next day, the judge said... "this alpaca isn't grey"... which resulted in the color chart being retrieved and comparisons again being made. Again, without a match, but with a new determination. Move her to the "Fawn" class. Now, that is all fine and dandy... but that means that now Appletini is competing and being judged for "Uniformity of Color" as well as all the other categories. "Uniformity of Color" in an appaloosa? Well, the end result of all this was that Appletini placed 6 out of 11 fawns with high scores in all categories except... I bet you guessed it, "Uniformity of Color". :-)
