Shearing Day

Today my daughter and I took it upon ourselves to shear an alpaca. We chose the six month old cria, as he is not near as big as the adults. It was the first time he had been haltered and he was NOT happy. We tried to lay him on a table for the shearing, but he was having none of that. We ended up doing it on the ground, and we didn't do a perfect job. He was our practice round; after an hour and a half we were almost finished. He still has a few long spots, but we did manage to get a pound or so of fleece.

You can see in the above photo he is not perfect; his head looks so poofy compared to his neck. He would not let us stretch him out, so we sheared him in the cushed position for the most part. My daughter did have him across her lap for a bit, but that didn't last long at all.

He is standing by his mom in the photo; we're not sure if she will be next in line or if it will be another one. His mom has a lot of fleece, so we are hoping to be able to detain her long enough to do the shearing. Hopefully we are able to get the other seven done (possibly eight, as the other cria could use a trim too). I am sorry we didn't get any video footage or pictures during the shearing, but with only two of us we had our hands full. 

It is all part of the learning process, and we learned the larger alpacas may be easier to handle as they have been shorn before. Time will tell, and hopefully we can get some photos of before, during and after. Stay tuned!