Alpaca Fiber - truly a green textile

Colors and crimps

Alpacas come in many shades from a true jet black through brown-blacks, browns, fawns, white, silver-greys, and rose greys. There are 16 natural colors identified for color classification in registered alpacas.

Huacayas and suris produce different types of fleece, each with their own redeeming characteristics. Huacayas have a soft spongy fiber with a natural crimp, making a naturally elastic yarn, perfect for knits. Suri is wonderfully luxurious as well, with longer, silkier fibers hanging in pencil-like locks, which are well-suited for woven goods.

Advantages over wool

Alpaca fiber is unusually strong and resilient. Comparable to cashmere, the fleece is known for its fineness, light weight and luster. The silky fleece, while similar to sheep's wool, is warmer, less prickly, naturally water repellent, and has no lanolin, making it a hypoallergenic choice for sensitive skin.

Alpaca fiber is easier and less expensive to process than sheep's wool due to its lack of grease or lanolin, and there are no guard hairs to remove as there are in llamas and camels. Alpaca fleece produces a higher percentage yield of clean fiber after processing than sheep's wool.

Shearing and selling

Alpacas are shorn yearly, usually in the late spring. Annual fiber yields vary, however, females average about five pounds and larger males average up to eight pounds.

The fleece needs to be processed, from cleaning the debris to carding, roving and spinning into yarn. Many breeders do this themselves and sell the products in their own farmstores or on the internet, many others sell the raw fleece through co-ops or other outlets. However you choose to handle the fiber, it is an important income stream to consider when buying alpacas and making breeding decisions.