Alpacas: Fun, Fuzzy Fibre - and Fill the Freezer??

Okay, so they aren't Storm Troopers but they do give off the impression of evil clones, don't they? In truth, they are more likely to take over the universe with their bone-crushing cuteness.

I was inspired into knitting another Doctor Who scarf after being exposed to dozens of 70's video clips and photos on the Doctor Who Facebook Page during Tom Baker week - showing the fourth Doctor in all his glory with that ridiculously long scarf of his. My old scarf was getting kind of ratty, so I started a new one - this time following the original pattern on DoctorWhoScarf.com to make an exact duplicate of the original. When my mom saw me knitting it she promptly informed me that I promised her a scarf last winter and never got around to it... so now it looks like I will be knitting well into the winter!

This is how my brain works: Facebook > Doctor Who > Scarf > Knitting > Spinning Yarn > Raising Alpacas. I have the unrelenting desire to get right to the source of things. Knitting isn't enough, no, no, no - I want to make the yarn myself. I want to raise the animals to harvest the fiber to make the yarn to knit the scarf that will profess my geek-dom to the world. I love alpaca yarn - it is so very soft and nice to work with, for starters, and from a spinner's/knitter's point of view it is a high-quality, valuable fiber that is just a little off-the-beaten-path from regular sheep's wool.

So when I graduate from university, find a job and buy a little place where I can have some livestock, alpacas are something I would be very interested in. First of all, according to the almighty, all-knowing Google, one can raise 8-10 alpacas on one acre of good pasture. Due to their soft, non-hoofed feet and the way they pinch grass off with their teeth instead of pulling it out by the roots, they are very gentle on the land. Each animal can produce 5-10 pounds of fiber every year, which sells from 2-5 dollars per ounce as raw fiber and more for spun yarn. It contains no lanolin - which is a grease-like substance in sheep's wool that has to be washed out several times before the wool is spinable - so the fibre can be spun as it is right off the alpaca. The alpacas themselves are "blown-out" with a leaf-blower before shearing to remove any dirt and foreign material.

I do have questions regarding the meat of alpacas. "To eat or not to eat" alpacas seems to be a hotly debated subject among alpaca keepers. From what I understand, each alpaca can be shorn once per year - the first time they are shorn produces the finest quality fiber, and the second and third cuts are of lesser quality respectively as the fibre becomes coarser as the animals age. At what age is the fiber no longer suitable for spinning? Alpacas apparently can live over 20 years, so with the exception of quality breeding animals, how old are they before theirr fiber is no longer desirable? With one-year-old alpacas producing the best fibre, it makes sense to me that one would want to breed their alpacas every year. Eating the older stock seems justifiable to me. It certainly beats selling unwanted animals for cheap (or giving them away) to places where they might be neglected or abused, and dumping unwanted stock for little or no money drives down the price of the animals themselves by saturating the market - making it un-economical for those breeders out there who are devoting their time to producing high-quality animals to continue doing so. To live sustainably and economically on a small farm, herd culling has to take place whether one is raising chickens, cows, pigs, sheep, or alpacas. I can put a significant amount of free-range, grass-fed, organic meat in my freezer and avoid supporting factory farming by not having to buy meat at the supermarket. Keeping an animal for both fibre and meat is also more economical than keeping one type of animal exclusively for meat and another type of animal exclusively for fibre.

Time will tell what I decide to do once the time comes. My goal is to live economically, support humane agriculture, and get as much utility from the land as possible. I think one way or the other, a couple alpacas would be a suitable addition to this grand scheme.