Gaston College

The Alpaca Fiber Symposium

FOURTH       NAAFP or North American Alpaca Fiber Producers  is an agriculture cooperative that was created to establish the highest level of quality alpaca products produced in North America.  This service is for alpaca fiber producers who have had their fiber sorted by a Certified Sorter using the Certified SortedTM System.  

NAAFP answers the question that many of us have – What do you do with the fiber?  They have developed products for all grades of fiber matching the specific qualities of that grade to the proper product use.  If you have a ranch store at your ranch, you can sell your products there at a set retail price.  If you can’t or don’t want to sell your products, NAAFP can sell them for you at their retail outlet.

Robyn Kuhl and Carrie Hull, also known as Coarse Broads, Inc. trains Certified Fiber Sorters at Robyn’s ranch in Sandpoint, ID and various other ranches across the country.  Check here for their 2009 schedule.

There is a membership fee to be a part of NAAFP.  They have regional collection sites for the fiber around the US in order to keep shipping costs low.  The Certified Sorter comes to your ranch to ’sort’ the fiber as it comes off of the alpacas.  There is usually a fee of around $15.00 per animal to have this process done.

I am anxiously awaiting the first shipment of finished products from our 2008 shearing.  I’m sure it will be wonderful…

I am going to try to post for a few days on the many different things I learned while at the recent Alpaca Fiber Symposium at Gaston College in North Carolina.

FIRST        The Alpaca Blanket Project  -  Did you know that Pendleton Woolen Mills is now making 100% American alpaca blankets?  Fantastic!

Peter Lundberg told us of his adventure  to secure Pendleton to make these blankets – a project that began in 2003. 

The project started with an invitation to American alpaca breeders to donate their unused fiber to the project along with the ability to purchase the finished blankets along the way.  In this ‘inventory phase’ fiber is sorted into 5 grades of a 3 micron range and 7 color groups.  1,000 lbs of fiber must be collected first before a run of blankets can be made.

At first the mill didn’t know if they would need to mix some sheeps wool as a binding agent for the slicker alpaca fiber and at the end of 2008 the good news was received that they had developed a way to run 100% alpaca fiber with enough tensile strength to produce a quality blanket.  Whoo hooo.

The Alpaca Blanket Project is now about halfway through it’s inventory phase for 2009 and they are hoping their goal will be reached late in the year and more blankets can be made. 

Their next goal is to start paying for fiber some time in 2010.

A few things I learned from Peter are:  we must eliminate second cuts when we have our animals sheared.  Think about it – this is our end product.  We can’t let a shearer just come in and botch a shear job because he is trying to reach a quota that day.  We must insist on perfection when shearing our alpacas – it’s business and bottom line.

Another thing is we must have cleaner fiber.  The more ways we can think of to keep VM out of these beautiful fleeces, the better off we’ll be.  There will be less cost in scouring, cleaning – whatever you want to call it. 

There is no fee to join the Alpaca Blanket Project.  The goal is to have an extraordinary product to go to the masses and retail at high end stores.  One day we will see 100% USA alpaca in our retail stores – how exciting!

One final thing I took away from Peter’s talk was tumbling ruins alpaca fiber – don’t do it.

It’s morning now and business as usual.  But in about three hours we will be in full swing on getting all 30 alpacas shorn.  John Gunther and his guys are over in Fredericksburg at Wildflower Ridge Alpacas this morning and will be headed this was around noon. 

We think we are ready.  We got almost everyone cleaned up yesterday – thank you Lord for the dry sunny weather –  so that the fleece will have a little less vegetable matter in it.  We gave shots and took pictures for our records. 

I will post later with pictures and updates.

I promised pictures  -  here they are!

Hidalgo was the first guy up.  This crew had already been shearing over in Fredericksburg, but we wanted Hidalgo to go first before we got to the boys with the best fleece.  A little practice never hurts….

The body is shorn then the neck and legs….

I think that is little Miss Cameron sporting her new doo!  Sometimes it’s hard to tell who is who after they’re shorn, but I think that is Cami.  So in this stall are some already shorn and some waiting to be shorn.  What a difference a hair cut makes!

Josh was a little tired so he stopped to rest a bit while Taylor was all ready to get her hair done. 

Here’s a picture of the crew.  Luke, Mike, John and Josh.  Then, of course, there is our Luke (the dog) who for some reason likes to be in pictures.   What a great crew – thanks guys, see ya next year.

If you see these guys on the road, please DO wake them.  They  work hard and  may get a little sleepy behind the wheel.  Be safe guys.

Oh boy, this seems really early, but we have our shearing date set.  March 20th is the day.  That’s early, but we’ll go with what we got.  I’ll be praying hard that we don’t have a lot of rain the week before (even though we desperately need rain) and that the temperatures after March 20th don’t get too low.  Alpacas shaking in their shoes is not fun – we had that two years ago!

Today it was in the low 90’s, a bit too hot for this time of year.  We are supposed to have a front move through over night bringing lots of wind and cooler weather – yeah!   I would love it, though, if after March 15th we didn’t get any more ‘cold’ weather.

A couple months ago we were interviewed by Carolyn from Country World Newspaper.  She had seen our website, really liked it, and called one day to set up an interview.  Country World is the Rural Newspaper of Texas and can be viewed online at www.countryworldnews.com. 

The article on Hill Country Alpacas can be found by clicking here.

Carolyn was a joy to visit with and we enjoyed showing  her around the ranch.  She met some of our alpacas and took a lot of pictures.  We want to thank Carolyn for writing the article on our ranch.  A little free advertising never hurt anyone!  Thank you so much Carolyn.  Come back anytime!

Look at this article from last shearing day.  Yes they got our names wrong in a couple of places, it’s supposed to be Thomas not Roberts, but all in all it was fun having someone come out to take pictures of this yearly event.

We are in the process of scheduling our shearing day for this year, 2009.  Hopefully it will be some time during the first week of April.  It’s a hair raising event!!! 

I think the alpacas will be quite ready by then to get all of that fleece off.  And with 2009 being the International Year of Natural Fiber, we can have a big celebration.

We just finished shearing our 22 alpacas and 20 from a neighboring ranch yesterday.   This year along with our great shearers from shearingalpaca.com, we had two apprentices who are training to be Certified Fiber Sorters with NAAFP.  It was a new experience for us using the certified sorters, but we are dedicated to the alpaca fiber industry and this is one way to further the progress being made for natural alpaca fiber from North American alpacas. 

The actual shearing day is always stressful for me….it’s my fault, because I wish I could be in more than one place at a time and many times I am expected to be answering questions from two or three people – at the same time.

I also have a lot of concern for my females who are pregnant.  At this time of year we can have females who are due within the month and some who are due in the fall.  I am concerned that the stress of shearing could cause an early delivery or a problem with the newly pregnant girls.  I may be a little oversensitive about that too, but it is a worry for me. 

See that belly – Victoria’s cria is due in mid May!  Cute – huh?  She’s just having a little sun and warming her belly!

Shearing started with all the white animals and moved along the color spectrum to light fawn, med. fawn, dark fawn, then the browns and then bay black to black.   It took us from 8:00am to 12 noon to shear all of the alpacas.   It is so nice to have all of that fiber off of them and knowing that they will not be too hot this summer.  Yesterday I was able to set the sprinklers for them and didn’t have to be concerned about them getting too dirty when they wallow in the dirt afterwards.

This kind of leads me to my next comment…  Our AOBA National Show comes every year in May.  We have been to Nationals only once and we did have a great time – even won some blue ribbons!  But, if we had been planning to attend Nationals this year in Sandy, Utah, we wouldn’t have been able to shear our ’show animals’ like we did all of the rest of the herd on Monday, especially if we were showing in full fleece contests.  We would have to run the risk of our animals getting heat stressed keeping all of that fleece on them until May.  If you’re never been to Texas in May, it can be getting quite hot by then.  Imagine wearing your warmest coat in 80 to 90 degree weather.  Sweating hot!! 

I think it could be time to examine the possiblilty of having the National Show in early March instead of mid May.  I think everyone’s animals would be in full fleece still so all would have an equal opportunity to show in full fleece and at the same time keep their animals safe from heat stress as it is still cool in early March in most all areas of our country.   Just a thought….

Take a look at the newly shorn alpacas below. 

Boy was I tired yesterday – that’s why I haven’t posted yet.  We got back at around 12:30am from the TxOLAN Spectacular show in Fort Worth.   We actually placed better than I thought we would since it was a Level IV show.  Every one of the 7 animals that we had there got a ribbon!  Renoir got another blue ribbon – this time in the fleece show.

TxOLAN is a fantastic show and every year there are new ranches who come to it.  And every year there are established ranches that come and try to take all the blue ribbons!  That’s what makes it so good – the competition.  The alpacas that are winning the blue ribbons these days are absolutely gorgeous!  Talking specifically about huacaya’s, the crimp is unbelievable, the brightness is remarkable and the fineness just keeps on getting finer!  That is what we are all striving for.  And then there is that beautiful head that is continuing to show – big top nots, facial hair, etc.  Fabulous.

Another thing I really like about this show in Fort Worth is that my parents who live just outside of Wichita, Kansas drive down to be with us.  Our son, Ross, and his girlfriend, Rachel, who live in the Metroplex came over to have dinner with us on Saturday night, too.  We had a great time at the dinner and at the following Live Auction.  The Live Auction was great and brought in a good amount of money for our organization – many thanks to all who donated auction items.  Our friends Bret and Rachel, who live in Fort Worth right now came to see us, too.  They came last year and didn’t get to see any of the show, but this time they got to see us show animals!  Rachel is busy relearning how to knit and she will be making a beanie for her husband, Bret, out of yarn from our animals. They are so sweet and are expecting a baby in about 4.5 months!  Very exciting times…..

Now, we have finished with our show season for this year.  It’s been great and now we look forward to shearing in late March.