Shearing Adventures

at

Heart of Dreams Alpacas

Here are Chana, brown and white llama, and Besos, her son, right after we brought them home in March of 2003.  The white lines are two inch hot tape that these two breezed through as if it was string.  We decided that these two were in desparate need of having their hair removed - we were pretty sure that hadn't happened in a number of years.  So, when the weather improved, around April, we paid someone to come in and do the dirty deed for us.

When all was said and done both llamas were well behaved sweet hearts.  Pam was sure Besos was going to freak because it was unlikely that he had ever been shorn in his life.  Both of them stood like champs while the shearer did his stuff. 

Even though they ended up looking like this.

Pam decided that for the cost of some decent shearing equipment she couldn't do much worse than this.  Of course, by the time it came time to shear again in 2004.  Little did she know that in addition to two llamas there would also be three alpaca geldings and in 2005 there would be an additional four alpacas with more in 2006 and so on.

Here are the results of her shearing attempts:

2004

Pretty good, huh?!  Just wait -

Our three very patient geldings after Pam got done with them - they look like they got on the wrong end of a weed whacker.

2005

Before and after for our Suri girl - Miss Phoenix.

Ashley was not very happy at this point, but Iraida was perfectly happy with all the goings on (she changed her tune in 2006 when it was her turn to go under the clippers).  The clippers we use can also be seen in this picture - the blue thing on Pam's hip.  We use Double-K clippers with Oster 10-wide blades.  Because they're similar to the blades used on dogs we've found that it's almost impossible to nick the camelids.  The motor is in the blue case, connected to the blades by a six foot cord.  The blades are very light compared to the more traditional shears.  The actual blades heat up just like regular shearing blades, but Cool Lube does a pretty good job with cooling and lubrication.  We've found that we can do up to four animals with one blade, as long as the fiber isn't matted or overly dense.  In 2007 we'll be using the Double Ks as well as the more traditional Osters for our more densely fleeced animals. 

2006

This year we invested in a Pro-Tie system to minimize the stress on us and the animals.  We try doing a standing shear first and if there's too much of a rodeo we tie them down.  A lot of people don't like using restraints and we certainly are not thrilled with it, but we also decided that the faster we can get this over and done with the better for everyone involved.  One piece of necessary equipment with the Pro-Tie is knee-pads.  Even if you use a pad to cover the center pole KNEE-PADS ARE A MUST!

Our llamas stood like champs, again, and all we had to use was the cross-tie to get the job done.

The alpacas were a different story.

This is Alex in full fleece and nine months old.  The fleece we removed from him won Champion Color fleece at AROW in July.  Brut, our medium fawn junior herd sire, is the shorn animal getting the sniff test from Alex.

  Here we have Henry, one of our geldings, in the Pro-Tie.  We've removed the prime blanket (from mid-side to mid-side and from the hips to the shoulders) as well as decent blanket (upper hind leg and shoulder area) fiber.  Pam is adjusting the restraint on the hind leg because it's slipped a bit.  Once Henry was down he actually relaxed, but Tim stayed near his head just in case. 

Most of the camelids were sheared in thirty minutes or less this year - as compared to sixty minutes or more in 2005.  The fastest and easiest to shear are the llamas. 

This is also the first year that the Pam was actually paid to shear other people's animals; and that was AFTER these people had seen the website and her past shearing efforts.

We saw these three alpacas when we had to take a detour to get to Duvall.  We talked with a very nice man who was clearing the property who told us how to contact the owner.  We called him and arranged a time to come by to get the fiber off these guys.  As we were told they hadn't been clipped in at least two years. We ended up doing unrestrained shearing on these three guys and even though they ended up looking worse than Pam's efforts back in 2004 the important thing was that they had the bulk of the fiber off and could actually get cool.  The joke was also on the humans - we did most of our shearing with the alpacas kushed in one of many poop piles.

  This guy looks like a dork, but because we were able to clean his upper body he's definitely a much cooler alpaca than before.  Besides - all bad hair cuts grow out eventually.

We had much better success at Zaros Alpacas and Barbara Center's female.  Barbara watched Pam while she sheared half the alpaca and then she took over and did the rest.

This has to be the best shearing job we've ever done - thanks to Barbara and her well behaved girl.