posted 13 years ago
My aunt has alpacas, my boyfriend and I just helped sheer them recently and they gave me the fiber. Here is what I know from theirs and their stories~
They have 2 males, in a pasture together, also in a pasture with 3 goats, they all get along. However, in previous years they have had male alpacas kill each other from "head butting" so you gotta watch out for that. The fiber is apparently easier to use than wool and has the same properties but better because it lacks lanolin and also doesn't make you itch like wool. In our quest to learn how to process the fiber we were given we have found youtube videos of children spinning alpaca fiber, it's literally that easy. One thing I liked to hear was that alpacas do not spit as often as llamas. They seem to be pretty shy creatures, my boyfriend tries to slowly trick them into letting him pet them when we go over to feed them for our aunt, he rarely succeeds at touching one. They get fed hay and veggie scraps, providing the goats don't steal the veggie scraps first, but sometimes it seems like the alpacas didn't want it much anyway. I would say they are horrible livestock guardians, as our aunts chickens still get murdered by local hawks and they're right next to the alpacas, they do finally have a better system in place to prevent this, involving well placed nets for the chickens to hide under. Personally I plan to have some in the future for their fiber, and they seem to be relatively easy to care for.
When you throw something away, there is no 'away'
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