Shear-o-Rama

It is done! After shearing 76 alpacas yesterday we got that yearly chore whipped out in 3 days total, which means that tomorrow (when we had a tentatively scheduled day #4) we don’t have to get our game faces on again. I have nothing but admiration for those folks that shear for a living. Yes, I know the money is quite good — especially if you can do 40+ animals in a day — but if I’m feeling sore after 3 days I struggle to imagine how Matt Best must feel by the time July comes around. Of course it was really fun to see the fleeces as they came off of the animals and particularly to compare members of a given family line. Though having said that we are all quite happy not to be shearing alpacas this morning.

With a bit of luck today, the kids might even get to use our pool for the first time this season. Looking at the week ahead the breeding season will officially kick off very shortly as well. Though we have generally waited until June 1st or so to start breeding most of our own females, we have several visiting girls (10 actually) here for stud service that come from points due south, so they are pretty much good to go. Now that the boys all have their groovy new hair cuts there are really no excuses either: time to get to work.