The fiber is what it’s all about!
Our goal as alpaca breeders is to create a national herd that can provide processors with high quality fiber of all grades that can be processed into products that support a growing American industry.
Learning as much as we can about the fleece of these beautiful animals is absolutely essential to our success as breeders.
Processors require fineness, brightness, color purity, cleanliness, good length, uniformity of fiber, and consistant crimp, but above all else the most valuable element of the perfect alpaca fleece is FINENESS.
Alapca competes with other high-end natural fibers such as cashmere, angora, and merino. These all currently hold a proment place in the American textile market. If we want to see alpaca hold a place along side these other beautiful products we have to consistantly be able to produce fleeces that hold the qualities of a Royal Grade fleece (19-20 Average Fiber Diameter).
That is not to say that all alpacas we now have in our national herd are able to produce that level of fiber, but that we are making breeding decisions that are consistantly working toward that end result.
Alpaca fleeces of all grades make beautiful end products, but the value of the alpaca long term will be in the highest quality elite fleeces that are produced and the amount of fiber we are able to produce in our national herd.
We invite you to join us in this adventure!
Interesting sites:
Go to the bottom of the home page to read their “The Making of Champions” series. They also have a great link to fiber testing that explains much of the terminology.