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What a
Alpaca Breeders of the Rockies
Quarterly
Membership Meeting August 8, 2010
(Sunday) Embassy
Suites 4444 Havana Street 9:30 AM to 1:00
PM
General Meeting
9:30am
Start
Welcome Kim
Sawyer
Introduction of New
Members/Guests Ron
Hinds
What's happening at
ABR?
Kim Sawyer/BOD
Nominating Committee
Carl
McGill
Member forum for bulletins
Events not sales - please submit your events to Kim
Sawyer before the meeting
CSU
Emergency Visit -
What to expect
10:00am
Dr.
Robert Callan, CSU, will discuss what to expect when you need to make an
emergency trip to CSU. How can they make it easier on us? What can we do to help them when we arrive.
Networking Brunch 10:30am to 11:30 am Join
us for a tasty brunch with mimosas and network with your fellow alpaca
breeders.
Physical
Exams by Dr. Robert Callan
Dr.
Robert Callan from CSU will discuss how to do your own physical exams at your
farm. More
information to come. n, if any, do you want your members to take? Add a "Find out more" link to additional information that you may have hosted on your website.
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Social Networking
ABR is going social on Facebook and LinkedIn. Social sites are fast becoming a mainstream communication platform. Social networking provides the ideal platform for associations to communicate, share information and discuss real issues affecting their shared interest. Social networking expedites exchange of ideas literally in just a few seconds. Social network sites can easily share videos and images, adding value to members. Using this communication tool will allow us to have a central site to store images of past events and share video interviews and educational material. ABR will be able to receive 'real time' member feedback on meetings, events, shows and education.
Help ABR take the next step in member communication. Inquire about volunteering to managing our social network sites. Contact Julie Averch at [email protected]
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Member Tips
Do you have a farm or alpaca tip that will help other ABR members? Send your article to Julie Averch at [email protected] for consideration for publishing in the 'Paca Parade
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Greetings!
We hope you are enjoying the new format of the 'Paca Parade. ABR is working hard to stay on top of current information and trends. A benefit comparison is included in the July 'Paca Parade which shows you the many areas ABR brings value to your membership. There are also new opportunities for ABR members to advertise in the Newsletter and on the ABR website. If you are interested in showcasing your farm or product contact Julie Averch at [email protected] |
President's Message
Hello ABR!
Okay, I can't believe I'm going to say it - I wish it would
rain. My pasture, what there is of it, is already drying up, so let it rain,
let it rain, let it rain! I hope you're
all enjoying your summer and for those of you expecting crias, that they're
healthy and everything you anticipated. I'm still waiting for my first one of
the season.
It's getting to be that time again where you may receive a
phone call to see if you'd like to serve on the ABR Board of Directors. ABR is looking for people interested in the
continued growth of our organization. There are so many of you with a great
breadth of talent and knowledge. Won't you consider bringing that expertise to ABR
as one of our leaders? Please give it some consideration AND you don't have to
wait for a call. If you're interested, contact someone on the board.
We have two exciting events occurring for ABR and our
members:
Adams County Fair - August 4th - August
8th
This is the first time that alpacas will be at the Adams
County Fair. ABR had hoped to have an alpaca performance show but not sure we
have enough attendees for that. If you're looking for an opportunity to attend
a performance show, this would be a great chance. ABR will have space at the fair for animals,
product and sponsorships.
Colorado State Fair - August 27th - September 6th
ABR continues our tradition of being at the Colorado State
Fair. The space we receive at the State Fair is completely free to us and
provides an excellent opportunity for our members to bring alpacas, sell
product and speak to hundreds of potential customers. The buildings are locked
at night so it's perfectly fine if you want to leave your alpacas overnight and
spend a couple days at the fair! Let's show our support for our State Fair.
For both of the above events, contact Heather Cram for more
information - [email protected].
And it's never too late to be thinking about ABR Fall
Festival. Keep your eyes open for further information on when the Fall Fest website
goes live.
ABR is committed to our Mission and Purpose and the support of our
members in marketing, education and the future of alpacas. I hope you're as
excited as me to get involved!
Till next time...
Kim
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Vice President
ABR
By-laws Review Committee
The proposed changes of the ABR By-laws Review Committee will be
sent to the members at the first of August. The ABR By-laws are on the ABR website at http://www.alpacabreeders.org/bylaws.html. There is still
time for you to review the By-laws and offer any feedback or changes. Send any suggestions to Becky Zierer, [email protected]. ABR is your
organization so these are your
by-laws!! Get familiar with them and
ensure they fit your organization!
ABR
Government Regulations Committee
The Government Regulations Committee has a new Chairperson, Katie
Mason. Other committee members are
needed so if you have any interests in this committee, please contact Becky
Zierer, [email protected]. This is an
important committee charged with keeping tabs on how government is impacting
the alpaca community. Also, if you have
any government regulations or questions that pertain to your local area, please
let us know.
ABR Long
Range Planning Committee
ABR's BOD worked many hours on a strategy for ABR for the coming years. This strategy can be found at http://www.alpacabreeders.org/docs/ABRStrategicPlan_041209.pdf . Please review it and
see where you would like ABR's emphasis to be.
And let me know, Becky Zierer, [email protected]. We need your
help!
Thanks,
Becky Zierer ABR Vice President
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Marketing Update
Well
GWAS is now over, and it was the largest alpaca show in the country for the
second straight year! Congratulations ABR and a big thank you to all the
wonderful ABR volunteers who made it a big success. The next marketing
events are the Pueblo State Fair where you have the opportunity to talk to
hundreds of public in a single day if you volunteer to staff the ABR booth for
a day, and the AOBA National Alpaca Farm Days where AOBA will advertise
nationally for this event. Join the Marketing Committee and help us
prepare for our second big show, the 2010 Fall Festival Alpaca Show at the
Ranch in Loveland. Contact our committee chair, Andrew MacArthur ([email protected])
to join the Marketing Committee or send suggestions for marketing. Peter Ziek Marketing Director
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ABR Shows
14th Annual Fall Festival
Emails will be going
out shortly for coordinators and volunteers for Fall Festival. Mark your
calendars for November 6th and 7th so you don't miss attending this great show
at The Ranch Event Center in Loveland, CO. If you are new alpaca owners
this is a wonderful opportunity to show your animals in a relaxed setting in a
beautiful facility. It's also a great show to try your hand at
coordinating a segment of a smaller show with lots of friendly experienced past
and present coordinators to help you out. We look forward to see you all
there. Great Western Alpaca
Show 2010 Once again the Great
Western Alpaca Show was the largest in the nation!!! Thank you to all the
exhibitors and volunteers that join together to make this the best show!! Make note now on your 2011 calendar,
April 29 & 30 and May 1 are the dates for GWAS 2011. Hope to see you
there. We will be having the first
coordinators meeting in August, so be thinking about what role you would like
to volunteer for!! Also, please send any feedback about the show or the
Denver Fiber Fiesta to Becky Zierer, [email protected] Alpacas at the
National Western Stock Show 2011 Yes, it's only July
and the stock show won't be until January but information for the Premium Book
has to be to National Western by end of July!! Anyone that would like to
volunteer to be on the ABR Alpacas at the Stock Show Committee for stock show
2011, please contact Becky Zierer, [email protected], 303-644-4110. It will
be our third year and there are still some changes to be made to ensure that we
showcase our alpacas to their best advantage. Becky talked with many of
you at the stock show about changes that you would like to see but if you have
any other suggestions or want to be involved in the planning of the show,
please let her know.
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FIBER
Since the last newsletter went out, ABR has run our product
booth twice: once at the Denver Fiber
Fiesta at GWAS and once at Estes Park.
Both times we had energetic, involved volunteers and beautiful merchandise. Many hours were spent organizing this year's Fiber
Fiesta. Barb Dedecker lined up a dynamic
group of instructors and classes, brought in a variety of top notch vendors,
had a variety of fiber competitions. Sue
Lindt put together a colorful, informative flyer to advertise the event. To target both the general public and people
interested in fiber, ABR sent press kits to newspapers in towns and cities up and down the
front range and advertised GWAS and Fiber Fiesta together via 500 cards that were sent to
ABR's mailing list. To specifically target a fiber-interested crowd,
about 250 Fiber Fiesta flyers listing all the classes were hand delivered to
yarn shops in Colorado Springs, Castle Rock, Denver, Boulder and Fort
Collins. TACtile published info about the Fiber Fiesta in its newsletter
with a link to the Fiber Fiesta page. The flyer was sent out to
spinning, weaving, knitting guilds throughout the area; these guilds published
information about it in their newsletters. The flyer was also sent to Schacht
Spinning Wheel company who sent it on to their list. The Fiber Fiesta
info, including the class list, was promoted on ravelry.com and it was also listed on
the North American Felters' national online calendar. ABR placed Fiber
Fiesta adds in Interweave Magazines - Spin Off, etc. And, of course, we
sent the flyer to all ABR members and asked them to send it on to their mailing
lists. We would like to see attendance
at next year's Fiber Fiesta improve over this year's turnout. What ideas would you suggest to help bring
more people out for this event? A
Fiber Committee meeting is tentatively scheduled for Wednesday, July 28 at
6:00. Watch for an email from Mary
Madison regarding specifics including the place. It's time to start thinking about the Holiday Bazaar at
Fall Fest. Is there anyone who would like to be in charge
of this event? Online sign-up, which
simplifies enlisting volunteers, will be available. We have guidelines, templates for letters
and procedures available for you to use if you'd like to run this. Barbara Ziek Fiber Director 719 495-6693
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Tax Tips Alpaca breeders should be aware of some
aspects of the IRC Section 179 deduction for investment in alpacas and farm equipment.
First, the Section 179 deduction is cut in half for 2010, meaning that it has
dropped from a maximum of $250,000 in 2009 to a maximum of $125,000 (indexed
for inflation) in 2010. It is slated to drop to a maximum of $25,000 in 2011.
This deduction enables a taxpayer to take all of his depreciation on a business
asset in the first year, rather than spreading it out over a period of time. Another
thing to be aware of is that the amount of the Section 179 deduction is limited
to the excess of actively earned income over expenses (computed without the
Section 179 deduction.) In other words, retirement income, investment income,
income from rental property, royalties from oil or gas, etc., does not
count. If you have a prospective
customer who wants to retire and raise alpacas, he should be encouraged to buy the alpacas and
as many business assets as he can before retiring in order to take full
advantage of the deduction. If you have a prospective customer who has already
retired, she will not be able to take the Section 179 deduction unless she has
some active income, i.e. income from wages, salaries, or other businesses. The
other businesses can be sole proprietorships, partnerships, limited
partnerships, or Subchapter S corporations. If the actively earned income is
not enough to offset the full Section 179 deduction desired, the excess can be
carried over to the next year, provided there is some actively earned income
anticipated in the next year. Also
be aware that land, property placed in service and disposed of in the same
year, equipment used to build capital improvements, intangible property, and property
that has been retired from service, as well as certain term interests, cannot
be depreciated. Immature animals cannot be depreciated until they reach
maturity. When
talking to prospective customers, be sure to caution them that each tax
situation is unique and that there are both dollar limitations and income
limitations involved in taking a Section 179 deduction. They should be encouraged
to talk to a tax professional knowledgeable about agriculture before buying, to
prevent a nasty surprise at tax time. Lynn
Boak, Esq. Arroyo
Seco Alpacas |
Inexpensive
Space Saving Feeders
Are you contemplating a new barn or do you want to recover some space
being taken up by bulk hay feeders? Want to eliminate hay being thrown out of
the bunk feeders or buckets onto the floor? At Wild Hair Alpacas we have
come up with cheap, space saving hay feeders using no climb horse fence and our
existing pole barn structure. For inside feeders we use the pole barn
structure and the wall of the barn, and nail the four foot no-climb horse fence
between the supporting poles to create a vertical feeder that are 4-6
inches deep (depending on your pole barn pole size), four feet high, and as
wide as we decide, based on the existing barn structure. The space
between the barn wall and the fencing will hold a flake, and you can stack up
to four feet of hay which provides a lot of flexibility as to how much you want
to feed at one time. We feel this has reduced the spitting contests as
the animals seem to have fewer issues with access to the hay. Putting the hay
along the wall in the space between pole barn posts takes up only the space of
the pole width giving us back the floor space originally taken up by hay bunks
and hay buckets. We also put these kinds of feeders outside the barn
under the overhang out to the poles supporting the overhang. This gave us
8 foot long two-sided feeders that the alpacas love, and they only take up 4
inches! These were built by nailing a 2x4 to the barn wall and then nailing
no-climb fence two both sides of the 2x4 and the support pole.
The is a photo below is an inside feeder along a 10 foot wall in the barn and the
other is an inside feeder between two runs.
Peter Ziek Wld Hair Alpacas
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Association Benefit Comparison
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Sincerely, Julie Averch 'Paca Parade Editor
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ABR Board of Directors
Kim Sawyer | President | | Becky Zierer | Vice President | Ann Danielson | Treasurer | | Lynn Boak | Secretary | | Barb Ziek | Fiber Director | Peter Ziek Director | Marketing Director | Julie Averch | Communications
Director | Jerry Kuzior | Education Director | Heather Cram | Program Director | Carl McGill | Past President |
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