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Shearing is the management practice that we do
every Spring on the alpacas.
It’s the removal of fleece from their saddles, their neck
and their legs and ensures that we can get the product
from them to the market and on for processing.
Alpacas need to be shorn, they come from very cold
aspects of Peru.
And to live in a country like Australia it’s quite hot
and so over Summer they need their fleece to be removed
so they’re much more comfortable.
Alpacas, unlike sheep are not as compliant at sitting still
and shearing for alpacas is a three person job,
rather than a one person job.
On the day of shearing you would normally bring the alpacas in,
halter them and then bring them in to have
their fleece sample taken.
This is normally taken from the mid-section of their saddle.
We send this off for processing and for analysing to check
for the staple length, the micron, the density
and the comfort factor.
Once you’ve taken the fibre sample you would then move
the animal into the shearing table or onto the shearing floor.
The animal would then be tied down with its front legs
stretched out and its back legs stretched out.
It would have a heavy weight placed over its neck
to ensure that it doesn’t thrash around.
Although it would appear to be distressing in the short term
for the animals, shearing over the long term is much better.
What it does is it ensures that the animals can remain cool
over Summer, it also reduces the risk of the animals
becoming wool blind.
We divide it into three different sections,
the saddle, the neck and the scrap.
The best wool comes from the saddle and this is kept aside.
The scrap is basically thrown away.
The neck is the next area of good quality wool.
If the animal is more than one colour you would also
at this stage separate out the colour.
At this stage you can also skirt the wool and remove
any of the hair segments from there.
If the animal is particularly even in its wool class,
you would often have large amounts of the neck that are
very high quality as in the leg portion.