Happy New Year From Your Suri Network Board

Hooray! The winter solstice is behind us and the days are getting longer. As we march into the New Year, the thought of longer days is always welcomed, especially when out in the cold managing our Suris. Wintertime can be magical though, and one of my favorite things is to head up to the barn at night within the quiet of snowfall and slip into the barn to hear the alpacas softly humming and chewing their cuds in their beds of straw. Such Peace. It is the hope of all of us on the Board that such peace blankets you, your families, friends, and alpacas this New Year.

Hats off to the Online Auction Committee!  We are very excited to announce the tremendous success of the Online Auction. Thanks to the committee for recruiting such great items for the auction, for the generosity of the donors, and for the enthusiasm of the bidders who won! This year the auction nearly doubled the income from last year’s auction bringing in over $10,000 to apply to the Suri Network initiatives that benefit our members and our beloved Suris.

As we move out of the holidays and back into the routine of managing our Suris, the Network Board and its committees are back at work. Here are some of the highlights.

Our Membership Committee is working on some new ideas to bolster our membership. As a Suri Network member, you can give a free membership to a newcomer to Suris. Contact Cindy at office@surinetwork.org to get that started. Do you know a Suri owner who isn’t a member? Send Randy their name and contact information and the committee will reach out to them.

To make our nationwide community of Suri Owners a closer group, the committee has added a “get to know you” project where the Network plans to send eblasts to the general membership with short biographies of some of our members. If you are interested in participating and sharing something about yourself, please contact board member Randy Brealey via email at randy@thealpacaplace.com .

The Suri Network has a long history of innovative programs, and we continue to implement new initiatives to encourage ownership of Suris and the use of their fiber. The Marketing Committee is working on 2 projects currently. First, working together with the Branding Committee, they are in the early stages of developing a new landing page for our website to attract anyone looking into Suris or their products. The current website is a membership site that is not as attractive to the public as we would like. This new landing page will provide a great general introduction to Suris, using the videos that we have created, but will still provide links to the current membership site and the extensive information offered there.

The second Marketing Committee project comes on the heels of the 4 fantastic videos that were created under the direction of the Network’s Fiber Committee. Those fiber arts videos are on the Suri Network YouTube channel. You can embed the videos or a link to them on your own site. This next set of videos will focus on owning Suris and all the great opportunities that presents. Scripts, filming, and editing of those videos will begin this spring when the grass is green and crias are romping through lush pastures.

S.H.I.P.- The Suri Herd Improvement Program has not been active recently! No other group in the industry offers such a unique and valuable tool to advance your herd. AOA Certified judges Stephanie Glyptis, Arturo Pena, and Cheryl Gehly are the classifiers available to Suri owners for this incredible opportunity. The S.H.I.P. evaluation involves scoring your animal on 8 fleece traits and 8 conformation traits, and subsequently that data is entered into a database. By far, owners who have had their animals “SHIPPED” think the greatest value comes from the lengthy and detailed conversation between you and the classifier about each animal. Often farms in a region will go together and have a classifier come to their area (sometimes after judging a show in the area) and visit several farms, or a host farm might invite other smaller farms to bring their alpacas to their farm to be “SHIPPED”. While huacayas won’t have their data entered into the database, they can be evaluated as well.

Although few have taken advantage of being “Shipped” that does not mean the S.H.I.P. Committee hasn’t been busy. They have been checking in with members who have had evaluations in the past and are getting ready to promote the program. We know that spring can be busy with crias and shows. As a reminder, your Suris can be classified in the fall as well, BUT you must have the alpaca’s most recent fleece with a table set up so that it can be examined. All the details for S.H.I.P. are available here. If you have any questions, please contact Candy McMahan at mgbcandy@aol.com .

 and includes great references for working with and facilitating the best Suri fiber for personal use or sale. It includes a list of shearing supply businesses, Fiber art resources, an updated survey of fiber mills, a description of processing options, and much more. Everyone should print this out and have it on hand as their first “go to” for sources of information and places where you can find more.