Not Their Best Day

Shearing day is not an alpaca's favorite day of the year. They usually are gregarious and curious, but when they come into the shearing pen, they turn grumpy.


Not that I can blame them...

This year we're trying something a bit different. We'll leave the fleeces on most of them, just removing the belly fiber so they stay cool, and shear them a bit earlier next year. The fiber will be several inches longer and hopefully the hand spinners who buy the fiber on Ebay will be appreciative, resulting in good auctions.


So shearing day should really have been called shearing-the-belly-on-most-of-them day, but that's too much of a mouthful, don't you think?



My friend Kelsey was invited to help. She's young, strong, and most important, a really good sport. That last attribute is important for people who help at alpaca shearing because sometimes the animals show their displeasure by leaping around, kicking or worst of all, spitting.


We'd warned Kelsey, but sure enough, it happened at a moment when no one was expecting it, especially her. The alpaca was on the ground, she was holding his head and concentrating on where Goddy's clippers were, a sensible thing to do when your fingers are in proximity to shearing blades. The alpaca let fly with gobs of green goo, and Kelsey was in the line of fire. I didn't get a photo because I went into rescue mode and raced off to get wet cloths. We got most of it off, but discovered that dried alpaca spit makes effective, if fragrant, hair gel. Kelsey didn't have any stray locks in her eyes the rest of the morning. And she managed to keep smiling.


(Can you believe such a sweet-faced creature is capable of a vile habit like spitting?)


But here's the thing that most impressed my husband (who doesn't often get impressed with alpaca handlers, no matter who they are) - Kelsey didn't let go of the alpaca, even with a face full of spit. Way to go, my friend!!


Here are a few pictures of Goddy's method of shearing alpacas. He starts with them standing but if they want to lie down he lets them.



The fiber from the body (called the barrel) is the highest quality.




This guy decided to lie down so Emilio is holding his tail and keeping alert in case the alpaca leaps to his feet.


One thing about shearing day that we could all learn from - as soon as its over, the alpacas are back to their gregarious, silly selves. I guess if you kick and spit when you're mad, there's no need to hold a grudge.

Shear Delight

I fell in love with my husband 30 years ago, over the back of a sheep in a New Zealand woolshed. I'd met him in a pub a few weeks earlier, went on a date and set my boundaries, but it wasn't until I saw him in his real world that I began to discover the manly man I'd become chummy with.

He learned to shear sheep when he decided to go to university and needed a reliable way to earn summer income. He joined a shearing gang and traveled around to various farms, staying in shearers quarters near the woolsheds. A typical nine-hour day went thus:

4:30 am - get up and have a cup of tea
5-7 am - shear about 60 sheep
7-8 am - breakfast: mutton chops or bacon, fried potatoes, eggs, porridge, toast, tea.
8-9:45 - shear about 45-50 sheep
9:45 - 10:15 - morning break (called "smoko") : tea, sandwiches or scones
10:15 - noon - shear 45-50 sheep
noon-1 pm - lunch: cold mutton, mashed potato, salad, bread and butter, tea
1-2:45 - shear 45-50 sheep
2:45-3:15 - afternoon smoko: more scones or something equally filling, tea
3:15-5 - shear 45-50 sheep. Turn the music up really loud to help get through the last hour.
5-6:30 - shower, get gear ready for the next day, drink the first beer of the evening
6:30 or 7 - dinner: roast mutton, roast potatoes, roast kumara (sweet potato), roast pumpkin, peas, bread and butter, dessert of ice cream and fruit and...tea.

Bedtime was usually around 9pm, after several more beers, then up the next day for more of the same.

The summer after we met and got engaged, Goddy went back into the woolsheds to earn his way to America, but he was a very different shearer that year. He'd become a Christian and it was more than a change of heart for him. He gave up the beer drinking habit, much to the astonishment of his shearing mates, and spent the evenings writing me lovely letters and reading his Bible. He still shore(or as you Americans say, sheared) between 250-300 sheep every day, which he discovered is about the same energy output as running back-to-back marathons or playing three rugby games all in a row or cycling not-quite-as-well as Lance Armstrong in a Tour de France day. My response to that information was an awe-struck and breathless, "Wow."


Shearing has been good for us, in a spiritual and financial sense. The jury is out some days as to its physical goodness. Though it certainly does develop a killer bicep - ask Logan for details on that - which is very attractive (to the wife) on a sweaty, hardworking man.

As Goddy is, um, maturing, he's come to realize that shearing eight and nine hour days is a young man's job. Which is why he doesn't put in those kind of hours any more. He shears part-time in our area throughout the spring and summer, and travels over the Cascades to shear alpacas in late spring.

Recently he put in a one-hour day over at Powell Butte and I was present with my camera.

Doing the belly. You have to be careful here with the personal regions of the sheep. Good breeding ewes have been wrecked by having a teat hacked off. Goddy is thankful that sheep don't birth litters like pigs do.

Going through the crutch. That sounds so much better than "doing the crotch," don't you think?

One of my favorite views, of the shearer, that is. Who knew Bi-Mart Rustler jeans could look so good?
He's just finished the long blow and is about to come down the last side.

Part-way down the last side. Notice the way he's got the fleece laid out. That makes it easier to pick up when he's finished. I know this because I did the picking-up for a season or two. Not all shearers are so thoughtful with their wool handlers. But then, most shearers don't go home with the wool handlers at the end of the day, either.


The final few blows. And then...


Gathering up the fleece into a tidy bundle. It's then thrown onto a table for skirting (picking the yukky stuff out from around the edges.)
This is usually my job, but I was wearing a nice shirt, plus I had the camera.

Throwing the fleece. Goddy is hidden by the flying fibers. Believe me, it's hard to throw a fleece so it stays together!

The Bible says in Isaiah 53:7...'as a sheep before her shearers is silent...' It's true, a skilled shearer gets the job done without the sheep protesting. There's a life lesson there...