Alpacas of the Coast

This year, we will be shearing our alpacas on Saturday, June 13 in the afternoon.  If you are interested in being a spectator or getting some hands-on experience with alpacas, please contact Skye.

Our shearer, Lori, shears the alpacas on the ground.  Their front and rear legs are restrained with a tie-down.  While Lori shears, one person stablaizes the front legs, another holds the back legs, and a third holds the animal's head.  Another person collects the fibre as it is removed.  Shearing is a perfect time to trim toe-nails, and Skye usually does that job.  Meanwhile, another person needs to be standing by with another alpaca so that the process moves quickly.

The fibre is sorted into firsts, seconds and thirds.  The 'firsts' are the best part of the alpaca - the blanket section.  The entire blanket is usually removed in one piece and kept in a seperate bag.  This bag goes inside a bag of 'seconds'.  The seconds are the neck and upper leg/thigh areas.  The thirds are any stray bits, including short cuts or the lower leg portion.  They are good for mulching plants or stuffing pet beds!  Last year, we sent our 'seconds' to a fibre mill to be blended with some sheep wool, and we were very pleased with the results.  The firsts/blanket are available for hand spinners, and this year, we also plan to send some to the mill to be made into rovings or yarn.

Shearing day is also measurement day.  On shearing day, before the shearer arrives, each animal has an elastic band fitted around some fleece on their blanket so that this section can easily be removed and sent away for scientific analysis to tell us just how soft our alpacas really are.  Each fleece is packaged seperately so that it can be weighed to determine an annual yeild of product for each animal.

Colour sorting is usually an important part of shearing day, but because we have a nearly homogenous herd of white alpacas, it is not a significant issue for us.  We will shear our white alpacas first, then move to our champagne and beige animals.  That means Jovita, Pamina, Belle and dear Cleopatra will be last this year.  We shear our alpacas all the way to their toes, and we cut off quite a bit of the fleece on their tails, too (so that it isn't in the way during breeding).

To the casual observer, it is fairly obvious that shearing is a stressful time for the animals.  This is the only time of year that we can be absolutely certain that spit will fly.  Sometimes, the animals just refuse to be led out of the barn!  Even so, the stress of enduring an entire summer with their fleeces on would far, far exceed the short shearing process.  We are already experiencing unseasonally high temperatures, so we're glad that Lori is available to come next weeked.