Shearing is done once a year in April and we need at least 3 additional people to help us get the job done.  We had an awesome team this year considering that none of the new team members were familiar with alpacas and had no shearing experience.  Everyone worked together like a well oiled machine.

In spit of the fact that we anticipated for the first day to be a slow day because of the learning curve, we still managed to shear 10 alpacas on the first day.  It was absolutely amazing how well the 5 of us worked together.

Ken Haught assisted in bringing the animal down and controlling the head during shearing.

Katie Doughty helped with blowing the dirt out of the fleece and controlling the real legs.

Alan is the shearer and I move the fleece out of the way of the shearer and hand it off to Leslie.

 Leslie Fesperman collected the shorn fleece and bagged and tagged the clip of each animal.  Leslie was our camera person and she also provided us with Crockpot lunch of homemade beef stew one day and tomato sauce for spaghetti on another day.

It was four days of hard work but we managed to have fun and develop a lasting friendship.

Thank you all!! We couldn't have done it without you.

Finishing touches, trimming toe nails and the top knot to keep the fiber out of their eyes.