Show Set Up

On Friday once we arrived at The Best of the US Alpaca Show, we needed to set up our stalls.

We arrived and pulled our truck and trailer in with many other farms who were arriving:

We prefer to get our pens set up before bringing the alpacas in.   When we arrive, the pen rails are there, and bags of cardboard chips:

There are many different ways to set up an alpaca pen.  Some people just use the chips, some use a stall mat, and some use both.  We have done it different ways, this time we bought extra chips for a solid layer of chips (the big purpose of these is to soak up urine - I know, gross!  But it helps to know the reason behind things):

Then we put stall mats on top of the cardboard chips:

Our newer mats have cute little alpacas on them:

Then we bring in the alpacas:

I didn't take a picture of it but our first stop with the alpacas was the vet check in.  We take our CVI (certified vet certificate) that we got from our vet last week certifying that these alpacas are healthy to travel to the vet at the show.  The vet at the show double checks everyone's microchip to make sure we have the alpaca that we say we have.  The vet checks over each alpaca for any issues and then lets them go to their pens.

We also went through color check.  This is where they verify that the color / sex / age that we registered the alpaca for is true.  This is to ensure they show in the right class (by color, sex and age).  This year we had no tricky colors, everyone checked in with the color we thought they were (it's trickier than it looks sometimes).

Then we brought them to their pens:

We set up fans for our huacaya alpacas (no fans on the suris - it messes their locks).   We put hay and water in each pen.

We also put up our farm signs and banners (I forgot to get a picture when we were all done). 

It doesn't look like much but it's a long and busy day (after a long long truck ride).

Tomorrow I will get up a post with pictures of each of the 8 alpacas we took to the show.