If the answer to any of these questions is yes you need to read further.  We may have a solution for you – aquaponic fodder!  OK, what is that?  Aquaponic fodder is young green grass that has been grown from grain or grass seeds grown in 6-10 days in a controlled environment using very sustainable and earth friendly technology.  This 6-8″ long green grass is fed directly to your livestock as a replacement for grain and for a significant percentage of your normal hay feeding amounts.

We are livestock farmers just like you, and we have struggled this season with our feed needs.  We raise show quality breeding alpacas.  Proper nutrition is vital to the success of our carefully monitored and strategized genetic improvement program.  We are also passionate about using sustainable farming methods in our farming and we want to teach others how to do the same.

We have been producing  aquaponic fodder here in Northern Colorado at the Center for Ecolonomic Excellence and feeding it to our show quality alpacas.  We are very selective about what we feed, and this has been a very exciting addition to our feeding process.

We will be  regularly reporting on our results with this new technology through our Mountain Sky Alpacas website, as well as through our Nourish the Planet Membership Community.  We will be marketing a unique livestock nutrition plan to selected clients which will include  an aquaponic fodder program.  Watch for all of this as we roll this program out!!  Email us at waynedorband@gmail.com or call us at our offices at 303-495-3705 for more information.  We look forward to sharing more with you.  

Livestock feeding does not have to fit the “old school” paradigm that you have always thought about – it can be innovative and sustainable.

Mike Harnett founded Heart’s Desire Farm back in the 1990′s and was able to put together an incredible herd of more than 400 animals, before he suddenly died earlier this year.  Rick and Nancy for GSAF had been good friends of Mike and his partner Elizabeth Tricase.  When Mike tragically died, Rick was able to negotiate a purchase of selected assets from the Heart’s Desire Farm estate.  Rick asked us and the Milligan’s to partner on this acquisition, and we were excited to participate.

We have now settled into our new configuration for this exciting purchase that we made.  The animals have been allocated among our three farms/ranches and we are now each managing our own circumstance as we did prior to this ambitious purchase.  We are still partnering with Gentle Spirit for a group of the herdsires, and we have about 100 of the outstanding breeding females that we own and that reside with us here at the Ranch.

A number of these females have already produced some awesome 2011 cria for us and we are excitedly looking forward to the 2011-2012 show season to see just how nice these youngsters are. The genetics of this herd is rare and outstanding.  Mike had owned a number of the best of the Peruvian imports including many where all you have to know is one name and you recognize them in pedigrees – Leon, Felix, El Mustachio, Guillermo, and Antonio.  We have daughters of all these studs and also daughters of Bueno, Hemingway, Danko and other famous imports.  You just do not find this genetics everywhere.

We are offering some outstanding deals on these HDFC animals – co-ownerships of herdsires, three-in-one packages of outstanding foundation females, young females, and some show quality girls we will not even be able to show because we have more than AOBA allows to be shown in a single age group of a color.  We have several yearling girls that have fineness less than 15 microns and one (Batista) with an AFD of 12.2 microns.  Thats right 12.2.  She has been in only one fleece show (the prestigious Estes Park Wool Market) and her cria coat won Judges Choice Award for Best Hand.  Look for her in the 10-14 shows we will be attending from now until Nationals in Louisville, in May, 2012.

We would love to have you come see and put your hands on these outstanding new Rocky Mountain animals.  We know that a buy of one or more of these girls would improve both the genetics and phenotypes of your herds, if you are looking to improve on what you have.  Give us a call at 303-495-3705 or email us at waynedorband@gmail.com.

For more details about this event, go to our page on OpenHerd.