ALPACA FIBER SKIRTINGAlpaca fiber must be skirted to produce a better end product. Skirting is a way of removing the undesirable "stuff" from the fleece. Don't think of this as a boring chore, think of it as a chance to get your hands into each of your alpacas luxurious fleece. You will learn a lot about the fiber each of your beautiful animals produce. Skirting was kind of scary to us at first. What if we do it wrong? We took our time with our first fiber and got better as we went along. The goal is to end up with a clean, uniform fleece from your prime (blanket) fiber. Start with a clean alpaca and your job will be a lot easier. You can "vacuum" your alpaca to get a lot of the debris and dirt out of their fleece prior to shearing day. By removing vegetation before shearing, you don't have to pick it out afterwards. Keep your pastures free of garbage and your alpacas will be free of it, too.
What do you need to skirt your alpaca fiber?
We have a makeshift skirting table. It's real low budget. A screen door on saw horses. It works well enough for our purposes. We do our skirting in our garage so we are out of the wind which we have a lot of around here.
Hopefully, you bagged your fleece at shearing time with the alpacas name on it so you know who produced a particular fleece. Our shearer always shears one side at a time, so we have two halves for our blanket. Put your blanket alpaca fiber cut side up on the table. Look your fleece over. What color is it? How much crimp does it have? Are the ends weathered? What is the staple length? Pull out a section of fiber and test it for breakage. Hold this section up to your ear and pull on each end. Do you hear crackling or does it actually break? Now you have an idea of the quality of this particular fleece. This would be a good time to record all the above information. That way you can keep track of who produces what type of fiber on your farm.
What is it you need to remove?
Vegetable matter consists of hay, seeds, burrs, twigs, etc. Depending on how clean the alpacas environment is, you might find other matter like twine, wire, or other foreign debris in your alpacas fiber. Second cuts are what's left behind when your shearer goes back over an area he has already sheared. They are about 1/2" in length and will cause all sorts of irregularities in your finished product if you don't remove them. Coarse fiber is found around the edges of your blanket. These will start to be the shorter fibers, too. These fibers are considered seconds and should not be in your prime fiber. Guard hairs are usually not in an alpacas blanket if you have good quality fiber animals. Guard hairs are long and coarse. You can see them sticking up through the finer fiber. They are mostly in an alpacas second and third fiber.
With your fiber cut side up, remove all the second cuts. We like to take our screen and pick it up a little and then drop it to encourage vegetable matter and dirt to fall out. If you have a table, you could bump it. Turn your fiber over. Look around the edges and remove the shorter and coarser fibers. If you take a sample of fiber from the middle of the fleece, then you will be able to use it to compare lengths of fiber along the edge of the fleece. It's important for fiber length to be uniform. Pick vegetable matter out by hand. You could use a tweezer to help with this, but we find our fingers work just fine.
Once you can feel and see that your alpaca fiber is clean and consistent, you are ready to store the fiber. Lay the fiber with cut end up and roll into a log. Place it in your clear plastic bag and throw in a dryer sheet to keep bugs away. Leave the top of the bag open so that your fleece can breathe. Label it with the alpacas name on the bag. Alpaca fiber is not difficult to skirt. With practice, you will get faster and better at skirting. If you start with a clean animal, it will not be hard work at all. Properly skirted, your fiber will be the good fiber that customers keep coming back for year after year. So skirt with your customers in mind and you will do well.
Return from alpaca fiber skirting to fiber processing.
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