Our First Alpaca

Here is a pic of one of our new critters. He is an alpaca, Ann has named him"Charmin", he is squeezable soft, for those who remember that commercial. We will be getting two more alpacas later this month.

Charmin was sheared earlier this year , this style of clip is called a blanket cut. It is amazing how soft and lustrous their fleece is. We have raised Shetland sheep, they have a very fine, soft fleece and the llamas have even softer fleece but neither compares to the softness of the alpaca fleece. Ann is chomping at the bit to get some of it to the spinning wheel. We acquired several fleeces a couple of weeks ago and she is itching to get them processed. I am building a tumbler which should speed up our processing quite a bit.

Here is Sandy, our guard llama. He has been doing guard duty with several calves and some goats for several months. Those have all been sold or moved to other pasture so Sandy was getting lonesome. He accepted Charmin as his new ward right off. When I walked out to snap this pic of Charmin he was quick to get in between us. He is not aggressive towards people he recognizes but he definitely wanted to see if I belonged in his pasture. Dogs and any other critter he doesn't recognize are advised to detour around his bailiwick.