Sheared, shaved, shorn

Well, we've reached the other side of the shearing mountain. I now have a barn full of alpaca fiber in clear plastic trash bags, forming yet another mountain for me to scale.

We shear our animals using ropes and pulleys that stretch the animal out on the floor.



This is how the shearers from New Zealand do it and they're the absolute best. Because alpacas' instincts tell them that their heads, bellies and legs should never be touched lest they become a quick meal for a predator, this method of shearing incapacitates them so we can get the job done in 20 minutes or less. It's also much safer for the animal. Sheep shears can cut the skin wide open in a split second and a jumpy and nervous animal like an alpaca is especially at risk for this. I've heard of people shearing their animals standing up, but I can't imagine getting a safe, thorough and clean cut with the animal fussing and jumping around. It's also difficult to get all of the fiber off of the animal in the belly area, back end and the arm pits when the animal is standing. Not removing that fiber is an invitation for skin parasites and an opportunity to overlook areas that may harbor infection or wounds from the previous year.

Contrary to the concerns of those who believe that this method of shearing is cruel, I believe it is the most humane, the safest, the most efficient, and best option in terms of the long term health and comfort of the animal. The ropes allow me to put my hands and my eyes on every part of the animal, which gives me a chance to discover any previously unseen injuries or conditions that have developed. I think this is important for the overall health of the animal. 20-30 minutes stretched out on the ropes is much better than living 24/7 with the discomfort and long term effects of a chronic infection or infestation.

OK, enough of the preaching. This is our set up and here is an animal on the floor ready to shear. Most of the animals are not stretched tightly unless they struggle and fight. Pregnant females are not stretched fully and are not put on their bellies for any long than it takes to turn them over.

We take the blanket off first.


If we can get it in one piece, so much the better, but if an animal is having a hard time of it or if the female is within 30 days of delivery, we'll do one side at a time. The blanket is the main section of fleece, from the shoulder to the hip, possible including the neck if the fiber is of high quality. This is the prime fiber and the most valuable.



After the blanket, I shear the belly, the back leg and the neck and head--in that order. The animal is then raised upright and I shear the back end, the tail and the other side of the neck and head.



The animal is turned over to the opposite side and the last of the belly, the back leg, the front leg and the chest area are finished. The animal is completely sheared in an average of 20 minutes. We take the opportunity to trim toe nails, give vaccinations, vitamin injections and wormer paste. At the end of 30 minutes, the animal is back in the pen with the herd wondering what just happened.



I'd love to say I'm as good as the NZ guys, but that will never happen. With a full crew, those guys can shear an alpaca in 10 minutes and they can do 50-60 animals in one day. Sheesh! I'm not that fast, that tough, that young, or that focused. I do 10-12 on a good day, and I never have a full crew--just me and my two girls. I'm always afraid I'll get too tired and cut the animals by accident just because I wasn't on top of my game. Also, my shearing helpers are my two young girls who don't need to be wearing their backs out by trying to be heroic.

So that part of the year is over. We sheared our own animals and sheared for several other farms. I don't know how many we did altogether, but I'm glad it's done. We'll shear goats again in the fall and we'll be sorting, cleaning, and combing fiber for the rest of the summer. After that, the knitting starts again--hurrah!!

Fibers and fleeces

The question has been asked, "What is the difference between fiber and yarn?" It's actually been asked more than once and I, in my wisdom, have neglected to actually give a meaningful answer. I forget that not everyone lives in my world, so here is my best effort at explaining fiber, at least in the terms that I'm familiar with.

Fiber is a raw material. It comes from plant sources (cotton, hemp, corn silk, flax, soy silk, bamboo, etc,) and from animal sources (wool, alpaca, mohair, silk, cashmere, angora, dog hair, llama, camel down, camel hair, etc.) All animals and all plants produce fiber in some form, but some are more usable than others and some fibers take some real creativity to find uses for them. I know absolutely nothing about plant fiber, so that's the last mention I'll make of that.




In my world, fiber is the bag of alpaca fleece you sink your hands into and breath in the earthy (and sometimes down right stinky) animal smell right after it comes off the animal, enjoying the total sensory experience--including the static electricity. It's still warm from the animal's body and the newly shorn ends look like a silk carpet.





It makes you groan slightly with the richness of color and luxurious softness. In my world, fiber is the mohair that smells and feels greasy until you wash and dry it so that it shines like silk and curls into perfect ringlets like doll hair. By the way, "fleece" is just another word for an animal's coat of hair that is harvested for use, usually some kind of wool. The blanket of an animal is the fiber that is shorn off of the sides, back, hips and shoulders. It the best fiber on the animal. The neck, leg, belly and...well... less desirable areas are normally either thrown away or used for things like garden mulch, lining chicken nests or animal bedding.

The first step in transforming raw fiber into something usable is skirting. This is where the entire fleece is spread out on a large mesh screen and sorted in order to remove impurities, unusable bits, and soiled fibers. During this phase, the wool is also sorted and graded according to fineness, color, and use. Some fiber will be coarse and straight (leg and belly hair) and most will be crimpy and soft (back, shoulder, neck, hip). Crimp is the wave in the fiber that gives it loft. Not all types of animal fleece will have crimp, but if crimp is a consideration, consistency in frequency and amplitude throughout the entire blanket area is important.



This first step is very important, as a poor job of skirting can ruin the fiber for it's intended use and create problems at every stage of processing. Imagine a gorgeous alpaca sweater in lilac and sage with tiny bits of hay stems scratching you every time you wear it!

After skirting, the fiber is washed and laid back out on the mesh screen to air dry. This is washed and dried alpaca ready for the either carding or combing. This animal has two colors in her blanket and the processed fiber should produce a tweedy marled looking yarn or felt.




If the fiber is agitated during the washing, it will mat itself into a shrunken, shaggy mess, beyond rescue and never to be used again. (How, exactly, would I know this? Experience, my dear, experience!) It will be a total loss, so the washing must be done by careful soaking with a mild soap and meticulous rinsing. I use my clothes washer only on the final spin cycle to spin out the rinse water. There's no matting and felting together as long as the whole mass moves in the same direction.

These fibers are mohair and they've been through a picker. You can see the huge sharp spikes in the picker and the resulting fluff. There are spikes on both top and bottom of this wicked thing and they pull the locks apart so they can be rearranged. Because mohair curls and twists, it benefits more than most fibers from being put through the picker unless you're using it for doll hair or spinning a curly novelty yarn. The young man running the picker is one of our Ranchers at Triangle Cross Ranch. He's decided that this is his niche and he loves running this machine--with heavy gloves and close supervision for safety.






After picking and fluffing, fiber is carded or combed in order to arrange the individual fibers so that they're all going basically the same direction. I like to dye raw fibers, right after washing because it adds interest to the carding and combing and it's ever so much fun to blend colors at this stage. Experimenting with different color combinations and imagining the finished products makes the work go quickly. (I've learned more about color theory on my drum carder than any class or instructor could have taught me.) Fiber off of a carding machine is called a batt or roving. If you're a quilter, you know what batting is and this is nearly the same, but made from natural animal fiber rather than polyfiber. You can use hand cards--two curved paddles with carding cloth (teeth) on each, but with the amount of fiber we produce a year, hand cards are kind of like trying to empty the ocean with a teaspoon. The white batts are mohair and the brown/gray is alpaca.








From a comb, the fiber is called top or sometimes a roving. This is a thin, continuous "river" of fiber that is ready for spinning. Again, the tools of the trade offer long sharp spikes and look like weapons of mass destruction.





So far, the fiber has progressed from fresh raw fleece, to washed and dried fiber, to combed top or carded batts and rovings. From here, it can be spun into yarn, made into wet felt, needle felted, locker hooked or anything you can dream up. Up to this point, it's been pretty much all work and no play. Dyeing the raw fleece helps, but it's still a lot of production work and not always pleasant. It can be dirty and smelly work, although quite satisfying for me. I just love to see a huge pile of carded batts sitting on the table after a good day's work. More than that, I love to see fewer and fewer bags of raw fleece sitting in my barn.

Enough for now. More later on two preparations that I consider the bridges between fiber and finished goods and the beginnings of the creative process--the magical, incredible, wonderful process of felt and the meditative, reflective, sometimes tedious process of spinning. Just think, we'll be knitting in no time! Whoopee!

Charlie

I'm one of the teenage daughters and I live on the farm. I'm 13 and this is my favorite goat, Charlie. You see, he was born on a cold, cold, cold, (12 below zero F) February evening... and Charlie's mama got scared and ran away from her babies(just born). We found the twins on the ground. The first was dead(sniff) but the second was holding onto life by a thread. We rushed him inside and put him on a heating pad. He was nearly dead and my mom was telling me how we had done our best for him and that it would be OK if he died. At about 11:00 pm, my dad came in and told us to do something with this animal because he was standing up, wagging his tail and hollering for food. I bottle fed him that night and every day after that until he was grown. Today, Charlie is as much a pet as one of the dogs. He knows that he's a member of the farm management team. He has a beautiful curly white fleece as soft and sweet as his personality.

What joy!! What wonder!!! What a miracle..
Ok I'll stop there before I get too goofy.

His picture isn't very nice because he wouldn't back up from the camera so we could take a nice one. We'll shear him next week and then he'll look like a little lamb.

Matchmaker, matchmaker make me a match

Time for breeding to begin. We've actually been breeding alpacas for several weeks, but some of them are just now starting to show signs of being interested. With alpacas, it's fairly easy to tell if a female is in cycle because she'll lay down (cush) for the male if she is. If she's not in cycle, she'll spit him off and if she's pregnant, she'll really spit at him. The signs of a successful breeding is that a female will flirt, breed and then turn into a witch, when she's around a male, that is. Not really that different from humans, I think. As with most breeding males, they're not at all conscious of what the female wants or doesn't want. They're completely, 100%, absolutely single minded! Did I mention that it's not all that different from humans?

We have several young females that have never been bred before and it's taking them a little time to understand what exactly is going on. We also have two young males that have never bred before and they're so clueless, it's absurd. I'm just not the kind of breeder who will actually
physically involve myself with the details of male and female contact. (Did I say that delicately enough?) I figure that if they don't know how, they're not ready yet.

These are some of our pairings for this year. Both of these pairs have produced beautiful gray offspring and we hope to repeat that. Rose is shown with Roxy, her baby from last year out of Black Knight. We liked the results so much we're repeating that breeding. Solace is our leading black female and we're breeding her again this year to our light rose gray male, Gandalf. They produced a lovely silver gray female born this past spring. Of all my males, Gandalf is the sweetest gentleman. He's kinder and gentler with my females than most of the others. I like him for that. And for the fact that he's just plain handsome.

Rose is a "special" animal. I purchased her from a farm in Spokane, WA and found out after the fact that she suffers with seizures--petit mal and an occasional grand mal. She had never been handled when I got her; born, raised and bred in a large pasture. We've worked with her until she's pretty tolerant of us and actually fairly friendly as long as our interactions are on her terms. We're careful with her feed and her stress levels. We give a year off from breeding about every two or three years and use rescue remedy when we have to shear her or do any shots or foot care. I'll never be able to sell her. Like the lovely grandma goat, Pansy, whose face graces my front page, she'll live out her life here until she dies. Not a bad life for her all in all. She serves her purpose and gives me a pretty baby every year or so and provides the most beautiful rose gray fleece to work with and in return, she lives a stress free life. Sweaters and shawls made from her wool sell for our highest prices. Even if they didn't, I'd keep making them, if only for myself. It's a strange relationship we have, Rose and I, but it works for us. I'm so glad I have her.

As far as goats go, it's Mr. Hermes all the way. He holds the honor of being the one and only proven buck on the farm and has a great track record. He'll only get three of the six females, though. I'm giving one of my older females the year off and sending two out to be bred elsewhere. I'm not telling Hermes anything about that yet. I'm hoping to be able to use his son, Sawyer, in a couple of years with some of the upcoming kids from the outside buck. Don't they just look like "Me and Mini Me"?

Rain, Goats and Yarn

Another cloudy, rainy day today. That's two in a row and it's wonderful. We're used to lots of sun, a lot of wind, browns and greens. With the rain, everything looks so green. The weather is cooling off quickly and just in time to chase away the flies and bugs. The corn fields are bare and brown, so the green is refreshing.

Even our old barn looks tolerable surrounded by green. We've been hoping this barn would blow over for years now, but even though it looks like it's fixing to fall over, it's probably the strongest building on our place. Such an ugly barn, but it serves its purpose. So much of our place is made up of old wood, "jerry rigged" fencing and old outbuildings, but you know, they just keep on doing their jobs. I suppose there are worse things than old buildings and fences.......like no buildings or fences, I guess!

His Royal Hugeness Hermes is standing out in the rain, seeming to enjoy it. He's in his prime and at his stinkiest this time of year. He can't wait for the girls to arrive in his pen the first of December. I think he uses way too much aftershave for my taste, but his girls just swoon over him and think he's beeeautiful! He does do his job, however and seems to enjoy being the sole breeding male on the place.

My daughter is spinning a bumpy novelty yarn from Mr. Hermes' fleece (extra well washed, of course) blended with a black alpaca from our black beauty, Solace. The combination creates a lovely dark charcoal color that we're plying with a silver thread. I think it's going to be great. It amounts to three skeins of about 200 yards each, so not quite enough for a sweater. She's got her work ahead of her to get enough done, but she's only about half way through the batch of rovings.

Carmen - Angora beauty

This is Carmen. Carmen is 4 years old and has produced her second batch of kids this year. She's an Angora doe, with a beautifully soft fleece. She's so gentle and obviously NOT camera-shy!

Carmen's fleece goes to make sweaters and yarns. She is sheared two to three times a year, and we love the fleece she gives us!

Sometimes things just aren't so clear.