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How many alpacas do you own?

20-50

In case of evacuation, can your farm be used for short term boarding??

Yes

What is your farm name?

Tuscany Valley Alpacas, LLC

What is your name?

Carol Grace and Ben McCarley

Where is your farm located?

Hamilton, AL

How long have you been raising alpacas?

3 years

What kind of alpacas do you raise?

Huacayas

Website:

http://tvalpacas.com

Tell us more about yourself!

Carol is a physician and Ben manages the every day activities at the farm. Most of our foundation girls are rose greys or silver greys. We are very proud of our herd and welcome farm visits.

Carol Grace and Ben McCarley's Photos

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Carol Grace and Ben McCarley's Videos

Earth Thunder 2008

Added by Carol Grace and Ben McCarley

Comment Wall (8 comments)

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At 10:52pm on January 31, 2009, Jeannie said…: Carol...what a beautiful photo....next years Christmas card pictures???? Thanks for sharing!!! Jeannie

At 12:20pm on January 12, 2009, Cindy Lavan, Chase Tavern Farm said…: Hello Carol. Greeting from Maine! Just up to 20's today but not so bad. The typical super cold is coming this week. We should be well below 0 in the evenings later this week. Today is beautiful w/good sun. New snow of about 4 inches yesterday so everything looks lovely and it's warm enough to enjoy being outside. Yesterday the wind was blowing too hard so I stayed in and did some sock knitting. Tomorrow is the heat way, close to freezing so planning on doing at least 2 barns worth of pick up before it's frozen solid and then some again!
Hope its not too hot in AL!!
Best wishes,
Cindy

At 4:31pm on November 24, 2008, John Froelich said…: Hey, guys, love all your pictures. What a gorgeous farm you have, and your animals look outstanding! I hope to travel more soon, and look forward to putting your farm at the top of the AL list of places to visit! Thanks for the greeting, and the invitation. Best holiday wishes, John.

At 8:51am on November 8, 2008, Cindy Lavan, Chase Tavern Farm said…: If I remember correctly Donovan is a fawn but we have seen our fawn throw black (even though) he does'nt have it in is pedigree (acutally is 1/2 Accoyo) so chances are good on some of them. We have a dam who is 1/2 Accoyo mated to one of our grey males who last time mated, had an 18.8 TB male who went onto to win many blues and Championships. Before we sold him, we used him here and he's given us a few greys with grey females.

Breeding is a step by step building process so the next male you use will have to work to build the next level of quality and color the way you want it. Sometimes we can do that in one generation, sometimes 2-3 but we can with the right steps taken along the way. Yes, we get side stepped with color as we can't control it but we can roll the dice and play the percentages to our advantage. Kinda like counting cards at the blackjack table I guess to a certain extent. We've seen with our sires what thier tendencies are in production and can mate accordingly and get the blacks, greys, silver and rose depending. With our reduction on the huacaya end of alpacas, we have offered many of these males up for sale as we will only probably keep 1-2 grey females in production. I'm working on the suri side more and focusing on that after 15 years with the huacayas. That's a whole other learning process with all new bloodlines, etc. but we are excited for a new challenge.

At 2:40pm on November 7, 2008, Cindy Lavan, Chase Tavern Farm said…: Agree it can get cold but so lovely in the summers it makes up for it a bit.

Do you come back this way often? Of course if you do a visit is in order.

Hard to always get the black/grey thing as you get a mix of fawns and dark browns, bay black and maroons thrown in. Occasional whites even. Keep driving in the color and sometimes putting to males who you know can do pull it out of the background. Some guys do this easier than others. We've gotten some great true blacks and silver greys from our fawn herdsire and one grey sire can pull grey and other only if bred to grey for some reason.

It's actually 60 degrees here today, overcast but not bad considering I still have 2 girls due - one a TB that gave us a TB GreyBeard daughter last year (Awilda - who took a blue ribbon at NECC) and the other a fawn bred by Evander so I am expecting a lovely fawn/light from that mating. They had a light fawn last year.

Cindy

At 1:20pm on November 6, 2008, Cindy Lavan, Chase Tavern Farm said…: Great photos of those cria! I would expect she's an excellent mom based on her mom. We had to distract her mom in order to touch her cria for baby weights or meds. She's a great protective mom and kept a close eye on those little ones. We sold her to a farm up north recently and they have her in production and love her and her babies! She had a really nice son with our Magnito, Spiderman we named him.

Interesting about Tim and the testicle thing. Not much you can do about it however but not repeat the breeding. Makes for great fiber alpacas!

So are you doing the black/grey thing?

Cindy