Shearing prep

The really good news around here is that the cycle of seemingly endless dry weather finally went on hiatus while we were away at the Futurity a couple of weeks ago. The bad news though is that now that spring has decided to act like itself again, it is insisting on raining in the days leading up to shearing here this coming week. Oh, well: all fans on deck. Literally. While the animals at the two upper barns are easily locked inside to stay out of the rain, down at the Stud Barn we’ll be using the ubiquitous green pen panels to temporarily keep the big guys (not be confused with The Big Guy who abides in Syracuse as I write this) from getting out from under the sheds we have down there. There are 207 alpacas here scheduled to be shorn Thursday through Saturday so even though we will definitely know that we have worked by the time Saturday night rolls around, all in all it feels like a very doable task. Way back in February we had originally reserved a 4th day as well with our shearer, Matt Best, so even knowing that we got to cut that extra day out feels like a bit of a psychological victory.

Jen and Kim have spent the last couple of days getting everything organized with individual labels printed out for each animal ahead of time. Today we are cleaning out the fleece room up at the Arena where all of the fleeces will be stored before they are either skirted for shows or are sent off for processing at the Vermont Fiber Mill & Studio, our new venture with Deb and Ed Bratton of Maple View Farm Alpacas in Brandon, VT.  With rubber stall mats now covering almost one half of the Arena’s sand floor, tomorrow we will be setting up the anchor points (a pallet with a 500 1b  bale of straw ton of grain bags on it ought to do the trick!) for the two actual shearing stations as well as Jen’s skirting table. That way when Matt shows up early Thursday morning he has only to arrange his gear (2 sets of shears, his block and tackle ropes which he travels with) before we can get under way. We’re leading off Thursday with the weaners and the show animals of the Main Barn who will be trailered up to the Arena by feed group so it should be a pretty exciting first day. Amongst other things it should give us a nice snap shot look at the birth class of 2011: for better or for worse the fleeces just won’t lie.

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