Alpaca Shaving Day! A visit to Via Verde Farm

I love Alpacas. In a nutshell, Alpacas are like Llamas, Llamas are a lot like Camels, but they are from South America. Peruvians have used them as beasts of burden in the Andes Mountains for a very long time.  I'm not a complete stranger to Alpacas as there was an alpaca farm my family would drive by occasionally when I was a child. After I graduated high school some of my friends and I stopped by to ask the farmer if we could feed them. It was delightful. They pranced around, they had little babies, they were friendly, occasionally spitting and making strange noises. When I got to go to Peru I was lucky enough to book a visit to an Alpaca farm and I learned a lot about them that day. So, needless to say, I love these furry, bouncy, little weirdos.




Fast forward to yesterday. One of my very cool Facebook friends, Natasha, sent me an invite to "Alpaca Spa Day". If you are like me you get tons of Facebook invites to events and rarely notice. This one caught my eye. I immediately checked my schedule and clicked "Going".  Someone on the thread asked if kids were welcome, the reply was "yes", so of course I knew this meant I could bring Randy. He was curious about what this would be like and what we could possibly do at an alpaca farm. When we arrived they had already started. There were these tiny little shrieking noises coming from the barn. Some of the Alpacas were already out in the yard, bouncing around, freshly sheared.

Restrained to protect people and themselves

When we entered they were tied down to the floor and the scene looked pretty graphic. It is completely necessary. They were tied by their feet. Alpacas are very long and skinny when tied up like that, it is for every one's protection. It would be impossible to shear them without doing this and because they are domesticated they really need to be sheared, it gets really hot. While the Alpaca is tied up they check their teeth and trim their nails. So technically it is "Spa Day".

The Alpacas weighed a lot, they can be 150-300 pounds. Some of them were able to be walked out with a harness, some of them were small enough to be carried out. I asked about the babies,  the breeding. They are only bred once a year because the gestation period is about 11 months. They look a lot bigger than they are with all that fur.

The shearing process 

The shearing team was amazing. They worked so quickly and efficiently.  It took about 3 minutes for each of them to get their nails done and be sheared.  The fur is beautiful when it comes off them. It is sent away and made into yarn. Alpaca yarn is so soft.

The farm was amazing. The people who run the farm are so great. This is a family owned farm. Tamara Miller, runs this farm with her family and she was very informative throughout the entire process. She answered our questions and was extremely hospitable. It's amazing to me she opens up her farm every year to let people see this exciting process.   From now on, I will always check my Facebook invites carefully, because this was a great experience I could have easily missed.


This is where we went:

http://www.viaverdefarm.com/

The bags of fiber

After they were shaved