Alpaca clips

Yesterday was the day of this year's alpaca haircut! We both dread and look forward to this day. We are looking forward to it because it is good for the animals to get the fiber off when the weather starts to warm up. It is incredibly exciting to see the result of our fiber production (our goal is to have a herd where the vast majority of alpacas have consistent and very good fiber scores) and we take out a small fiber tuft from some of the animals and have it evaluated. We're a bit dreading the shearing day, because it's quite a big job to prepare and rig for shearing in the alpaca house. So everything else has to be put aside and the focus has to be on the animals to be sheared. The animals must be as dry as possible and we remove brush, straw and hay so that they are as clean as possible. This year the weather has been unpredictable, with rain showers coming and going, hot and cold, and we have postponed shearing several times. Alpaca shearing of wet animals is a bitch! The shearing machine runs hot and wet fiber (wool) must be dried. This year's shearer, Geir from Killingmo alpaca, was in good spirits and after 4 hours 26 animals were sheared! We are so pleased! We usually have Colin Ottery, an alpaca shearer from England, but the last 2 years it has not been possible as there have been entry restrictions to Norway. We are happy that we can clip the animals - In Norway, there are only 3 people who take on clipping, and when there are 3000 alpacas, it means many animals on each clipper and a lot of driving when there are alpaca farms from south to north.

This weekend we had overnight guests at the farm who the day before were participants in the alpaca walk and alpaca safari. They got to walk with the alpacas and see the alpacas with fluffy fiber on Saturday and then see the whole alpaca herd freshly cut and unrecognizable the next day. It was kind of cool that they got to see the alpaca mower in full swing.

Saturday we will travel to Bergen and deliver 5 mares to a lovely family at a fantastic place in Arna. We are happy with them and the alpacas will have a great time. We will stay in Bergen for 1-2 days and show the handling of the alpacas and give as much information as we can. They are probably as excited as we were when we got our first 5 mares.