SNOWMASS SHEARING 2009

Posted on May 15th, 2009

Shearing was quite the event this year. 600 + alpacas to shear and a horrible weather forecast what do you do? We have a fixed shearing date with a professional shearer that is inflexible to change at the last minute due to the fact he is in high demand and booked for the rest of the shearing season.

We booked 7 days starting Monday May 4th. Every alpaca was quickly moved into as many shelters as we can find to keep them dry for shearing week. This makes for twice the work verses just moving them from the open pastures strait into the shearing arena. Working with damp fleeces is real pain as they need extra care and have to be placed into labeled WET or DAMP bags so they can be re-opened and set out to dry before they can be baled. None the less they all have to be shorn so the rule of thumb is to expect the worst and be prepared.

All fleeces even damp get skirted and sampled and then sorted.

This year we made a concerted effort to weigh all our alpacas, old and young, PRIME FLEECES.

PRIME meaning; Skirted, Clean, Prime Blanket fiber. (SCPB) The true weight of a fleece that is ready to be shown and or sold as prime and baled as prime.

Neck wool is skirted away from the prime. Leg and belly is also skirted away from prime all the matted vegetable ridden parts of the fleece area are also removed.

The prime weight of the blanket after all is the most important weight in measuring value production of fleece in our alpacas. We have established a mid side area for overall genetic value of micron for the prime blanket fleece, so in hand we should have the weight value of the prime fleece for genetic measurements.

The neck wool is usable especially off the first fleeces and can be calculated as seconds. But I still don’t think it should be put in with leg and other remains that typically are tossed and or considered contaminates to the prime. Total fleece weight just does not specify the differences in grade and value to be the weight for genetic measurement.

For our production the neck wool is skirted and placed in bulk by micron and color for baling purposes. Most of the adult neck 3 years and older is very short and sold as thirds for felting. The leg wool could be used for felting and or rug blends as well but because we are not set up for selling 3rd grade wool, it’s sucked up in our vacuum system as its being shorn so not to contaminate the prime blanket. The suction sends it to a holding vat which is dumped presently into our arroyos. All the creatures of woods have alpaca wool bedding for their dens and love us.

The motivation of our breeding program in fact is for us to get to the place were our alpacas prime runs into the neck and down the legs and under the belly, is equal in length and overall grade to the prime, then can theoretically be added to the prime without devaluing the overall quality and grade of the prime. With the help of better shearing techniques and diligent grading records, we have been able to make these breeding decisions which in fact are moving our herd in this direction.

For the sake of getting solely prime blanket weight we did not place any neck fiber with our fleeces, including the Royal Neck from the juveniles first shearing. We have been told by one mill they will indeed sort ROYAL grade neck fiber in with the Royal grade prime blanket if it is long enough. None the less we have baled our neck separately, and will wait and assess the finished products before we know for sure if it is sensible in terms of value to add it to the prime.

Therefore when we know for sure that the mills can process the neck fiber with the prime without devaluing the overall prime production then we can add the neck into the prime for a total prime weight.

Our concern about recording fleece weights is that we have seen many fleece weights grossly recorded and documented for added market value yet are not providing any specific information about the quality, kind and classing factors of the fleece weight.

So how do you get a total fleece weight?

There are a number of ways this is recoded. One is by weighing the alpaca before shearing then again after shearing and the weight loss during this process is the documented recorded and marketed total fleece weight of the alpaca. Does this sound logical and or like a scientific value for fleece weight? Not to us unless you want to know how much weight your alpaca lost for its health and well being. It has no scientific value in relation to the actual fiber being taken off as there is way too much contamination and variable elements of what is being weighed to assume this is an accurate value of fiber being removed. What fiber is valued and what fiber is ready for the dumpster. The measurements we have seen recorded from this method are typically in the 10 to 12 pound range.

The other weight of record comes by taking the entire fleece from the floor and putting it into bags and weighing it all together for total fleece weight. Again we question what value does the hair off the legs, the second cuts, the belly and chest wool, the fiber with vegetable contamination and dung stained fiber have to do with measurable valued fiber weight of the alpaca.

We did a total fleece weight experiment with some of our out back boys. Two of them had 2 years of fleece, average micron of 24, and they were dirty and lots of dried mud on the leg wool. We took a total fleece weight on each of them. One weighed in at 11.2 lbs and the other 12.1 lbs. Then I skirted the fleece and the 11.2 lb had a blanket of 4.1 and the 12 .1 lb had a prime skirted blanket of 4.7. The rest was nasty and thrown away. This again was 2 years of growth. 7+ inch staples.

The other 2 boys that had only 1 year of growth, 4 inch staples but also in the 24 plus micron range. One had a total fleece weight of 9.2 lbs and the other 10.1 lbs. This was everything, blanket, neck, and nasty leg for these weights. After skirting the leg wool was tossed, the neck was short and much higher in medulation and tossed, and the blanket was reduced to a 3.2 lb prime and the 10.1 lb was reduced to a 3.5 lb. Much of their prime fleece was skirted down because of medulated fiber from lower section of the fleece and stronger fiber in the bib areas. That’s why they are out back boys!

If we place greater value on an alpaca for its total fleece weight and use total fleece weight as a genetic measurement for EPD’s than you can be sure these methods of putting as much on the scale as possible are being used to obtain added weight value at any cost for better marketing.

The average fleece weight for an alpaca bred to produce Royal or Baby fine fiber from a 12 month period of growth from a well skirted prime fleece is 2 to 3.5 lbs pounds. Below this average you should have below 18 micron fleece. Weights above this are superior as long as the fiber is within a Baby grade and anything below this such as Royal grade that is above 3.5 lbs is phenomenal. As you get into the superfine grade your price value decreases dramatically so the added weight value is lost in higher micron.

Once again the prime fleece is the highest valued product your alpaca can produce and what is presented to represent the alpaca, therefore genetically the value of weight we should be using in any science progeny testing. If we want to get valued production records of our alpacas then we have to record the values that are most important which is the honest weight of the skirted prime blanket.

In our breeding program, assessing the values we know are most important are the values which will lead to bettering our production decisions and overall herd advancements.