News
June 09
In June 2009, Lyn was invited to participate as one of the judges for the International Fleece Show, to be conducted in conjunction with the American Alpaca Owners & Breeders (AOBA) National Show and World Alpaca Conference in Cleveland, Ohio. She considered this a great honour and her report on her experiences at the IFS follows.
International Fleece Show, Cleveland Ohio USA
There were 935 fleeces entered in the International Fleece Show which was run in conjunction with the AOBA National Show in Cleveland, Ohio. I was fortunate to be invited as one of the judges, who came from Canada, Australia and the USA. Anyone who has organised a fleece show of any kind will understand the logistical nightmare involved in a show of this scale. However it was done in true American style with tremendous professionalism and panache.
The final display featuring all 935 fleeces with their rosettes was a sight to behold, to the enormous credit of the convenor (Fleece Show Superintendent in American parlance) and the large army of volunteers.
Australian fleeces fared extremely well and of the 44 entries from Down Under there were 37 rosettes awarded, plus a Colour Champion (suri) and two Reserve Colour Champions (also suri). Among the 37 prizes were 11 x first places.
Without wishing in any way to detract from the great success of the Aussie exhibits, I would like to add that it is much easier to receive an award in an American Show under AOBA rules than it is here. And that is because in a show of this size, the classes are split by colour, age, sex, and size of class.
So if you enter a junior white fleece, it is in a separate class for male and female and then once the class size reaches 15 entries, it is split in half, and the ribbons go up to 6 places irrespective of the number of exhibits in the class. In a class of say 16 entries, which is split into two classes of 8, 12 out of 16 entries will receive awards! Makes for very happy exhibitors and I guess that's a big positive. However it does detract from the show awards being a benchmarking exercise, certainly for the minor placings, depending of course on the overall quality in the class.
Notwithstanding any of that, the quality was extremely high in the whites and light colours. Also the top fleeces in the colours were of an excellent standard. I had the privilege of judging the (Huacaya) Beige, Light Fawn and Brown Males, plus the Grey Females. Also the dubious honour of judging the Multi and Indefinite (don't ask) Male classes.
For the first time in my judging career I awarded a fleece over 90 points, and thinking that the brain had succumbed to the jet-lag factor, I requested one of the other judges to come and second-score it. Without seeing my score sheet, he scored it half a point up on my total! The AOBA score card is identical to our current Australian card, (although there are changes about to be made), so you now have an idea of the quality of the fleeces I'm talking about. The White Colour Champion scored 95.5 points! Very exciting to see alpaca fleeces reaching this level of excellence.
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