Alpaca shearing
I am sore and weary but I do love those long neck alpacas looking so skinny out there in the field and the bags of fiber piled high in the barn.
We didn’t get done this weekend - have to do at least next Wednes and possibly a 4th day. I might have been a tad ambitious in how many per hour I thought we could do! But, I believe we are going about as fast and efficiently as we can and so that’s just good enough. We are doing about 1 alpaca every 45 mins - worked from 10 am to 4 pm Sat and Sun with time off for lunch; got all 12 males plus1 female and her cria finished; so we sheared 14 all together. Still need to finish up 9 females and 2 crias which I guess means 2 more days here for my herd before we move on to starting Linda’s.
Lots of work but… I really love doing it. I like shearing, I like handling each and every alpaca, touching them all over and really seeing how the fiber grows. I guess the fact is that I’ve started to become a size of herd where it makes more sense to bring in a team of pros. They could probably shear the entire herd in a single day and all I’d have to do is sit and sip beers and point at things for them to better. By the time I pay 2 (or more) helpers and feed everybody for several days — the numbers don’t bear out doing it myself being lower cost either. But, I like doing it! So, we’ll see about next year.
In the meantime… I want to share my alpaca shearing crew Job Descriptions. Everybody said it helped them to understand what they were supposed to be doing and when so here they are in the next post.
