Alpaca Fibrehow to get the best from it

Joy Whitehead discusses fleece production and uses

Why did you buy alpacas? Or why might you want alpacas? When I first saw alpacas in June 1989 I firstly was fascinated by these beautiful peaceful enigmatic creatures, and then I marvelled at the softness and fineness of their fleece, realising that here was a wonderful fibre which could rival cashmere, and I was hooked! Three weeks later I purchased 5 alpacas (from the ones I had already seen) at auction in Penrith. 

SHEARING ALPACAS 

Then the learning process began, so right away I organised for them to be sheared. All alpacas benefit from an annual clip. With only 150 alpacas in the country there were no specialist alpacas shearers here in those days and so I found a sheep shearer who was willing to take on the task. He decided to shear them standing and took 45 minutes per alpaca. With a pair of sheep dagging shears you can still shear your own alpacas. But generally it’s now very different, with the alpacas sheared laying down and a specialist shearer can shear up to twelve per hour. There are alpaca shearers who travel around the country. They get booked up quite quickly so if you haven’t reserved your slot early you may have to wait a while. You will find a list of shearers on the BAS website, www.bas-uk.com, or you can ask other alpaca owners whom they recommend.

YARN PRODUCTION