Take it all off (baby).

Some of the more frequently asked questions we field from other breeders and prospective alpaca owners, particularly this time of year, relate to the shearing of crias. Do we do it? If so, at what age and what are the benefits of doing so versus the downside of just leaving the tui fleece (the fleece an alpaca is born with) on the cria until the following spring when the entire herd will get shorn anyway?

The short answers to those questions are: 1. yes, we do generally* shear our crias somewhere between 1 and 3 months of age at least during the warm months of the year, 2. the major benefits are a cleaner 1st (or 2nd depending on how you’re counting) fleece for the following spring, good from both a textile perspective as well as for the show ring, and 3. the only downsides of cria shearing are the possible temporary rejection of the baby by its dam (though rarely lasting more than an hour or two) and the fact that if you shear and then run into a stretch of cold weather, some action (cria coats, locking them in on cold nights) will be required until the little one gets enough fleece growth back to stay warm. This time of year it can admittedly start to get a little dicey, at least up north. Because of the quickly shifting weather pattern in Vermont for instance, we feel that we might at this time still have about a two week window to shear here. Once it starts to get consistently chilly those crias that are still unshorn will just have to be left until shearing day in May 2011.

In any case…a few days ago we were finishing up cria shearing in one of the feed groups at the Arena that contained the 2 to 3 month olds—those born in early summer—when I got an idea. Needless to say the new IPhone is a wonderful/dangerous tool to have in my arsenal of toys! The footage in the link at bottom of the page was taken with said device and though a little bit shaky at times, it gives you a pretty good idea of what is involved in the event that you’ve never seen this process before. A little primer for those who are new to this: the vast majority of alpaca shearing (whether crias or adult animals) is done using some form of restraint system. Hardware varies from a shearing table such as this one (hat tip to Light Livestock Equipment) to just a simple block and tackle set up on the ground as we use here. In either case, the idea is simply to render the alpaca immobile by stretching them out, with one set of ropes for the front legs and one for the back. Obviously the alpacas don’t like being restrained this way but it’s quick (even the completely unedited version of the shearing video below was just under 7 minutes) and much, much safer for both the alpaca and the humans involved. The first several years we sheared adults animals here (1998 to 2001) it was done standing up and the results were often not pretty.  The alpacas got easily spooked as the fiber came off and brushed against their legs, the humans in charge of restraint (that was most often me) got the crap beat out of them, the chances of animals and humans getting cut by the electric shears were far greater, and perhaps worst of all for all parties involved, it took longer. The animals didn’t look terribly good after the fact either. Been there, done that. Not ever doing it that way again.

The animal being shorn below is the as yet unnamed full sister to CCNF Silken Damask. You will see Jennifer using both a set of regular electric sheep shears for doing the primary shearing as well as pausing in between several times to clean up the upper legs, head, belly, and chest (that is done last) using what is essentially an electric dog clipper for more refined touch ups and/or sensitive areas (think scalpel vs. broad sword). When we shear our crias we always do one side first, them flip them over (all while still restrained) and do the other. If done properly, this should leave us with an alpaca that will need only the top of its head (top knot) and possibly parts of its tail fiber trimmed (judges don’t like poopy-tail, that’s a technical term, BTW) before going into the show ring next spring. The stated goal then of a proper cria shearing is to get all of the fiber off of the blanket area (back and torso), neck, and upper legs leaving an animal that will have it’s dignity intact and be quite visually pleasing to the eye as the fleece grows back in.  One notable exception to the full shearing rule is the tail which we leave alone. Though I personally can’t stand that look in adult alpacas (friends don’t let friends show alpacas with pom-pom ass), we’ve found that by leaving a cria’s tail alone at this age there is a far lesser chance of their dams rejecting them when we’re done. It’s a scent thing. In all cases the newly sheared cria is temporarily put back into a bonding pen with its dam immediately after shearing. We won’t let the mom and cria back out into the general population until we’ve seen the baby nurse again, the surest sign that the dam is okay with her kid’s new hair cut and accepts them. Sorry for the long-winded intro, now without any further ado:

Please click here to see the cria shearing video!

*There are a small number of our foundation females who have a track record from years gone by of rejecting their crias after we shear them, no matter what wily tricks we try to play. Life is too short to be knowingly creating that kind of stress for all involved, alpacas and humans. The crias of that select little club will get naked with their dams and the rest of the herd in the spring instead…