Welcome back troops for Episode 9!!!! Apologies it’s been a while since the previous episode but we’ve been working on something huge! a big announcement is coming soon (we promise) ;)
In this episode Terry is continuing the monumental task of shearing 180 Alpacas and Llamas, starting with some of the boys at Lingholm! As Terry is giving the boys their incredibly smart haircuts he’s talking through some top shearing tips and behind the scenes information about our shearing process.
In case you were wondering about our Animal Ethics surrounding shearing, here it is: https://alpacalyeverafter.co.uk/our-alpaca-welfare-policy/
Transcript:
Hi guys, welcome back to out YouTube channel
Alpacaly Ever After Video Diaries, uhm apologies
for the last couple of weeks, we’ve not done
a video we’ve been super busy, we’ve got lots
to tell you.
But today were gonna be concentrating on shearing
these boys.
Uhm so let’s get in there, let’s get cracking
– I’ll show you how to shear an Alpaca.
So today I’m going to be shearing the Alpacas
stood up, so basically i’m only going to be
doing the middle bit this year so, I’m going
to be using the crush, uh have a look in here,
i’ll just show you round, bit of a tight space
and the whole idea is to keep them stood up
and keep them in one place, so yeah we’re
gonna lead them in, sort of fasten them to
one end, and then they’ll stand here perfectly,
nice and still hopefully and i get to shear
the middle bit of an alpaca, some basics what
you need to use when shearing are some clippers
obviously, some scissors to do their fringes
and then toenails and we check their teeth
and do a few injections if needed if you see
any mites say uh any signs of mites, so all
the boys are all ques and qued up ready to
go uhm so yeah, we’ll do a bit of a montage,
get a bit of music playing uhm speed this
day up!
So lets get started.
So i’m just gonna give him..
I’m gonna worm him basically, this is a wormer
and i tiny bit of vitamins
So that’s one done!
the first one done, took about 15 minutes,
nothing too hard his fleece is absolutely
beautiful, it’s super soft, super fine – he
must have a bit of Suri Alpaca in his DNA
somewhere, so yeah let’s bag it up
Next one, check out how fluffy he is!
so yeah we’ve basically got to get him to
see again, there he is underneath there, cut
all this off, gonna give him a mullet, probably
a mullet cut gonna leave his sideburns on
and just get his body off again and get him
super fluffy for next year.
oh he’s a big boy he’s a big lad…
there we go
so when doing tails, erm you’ve got to thin
this out, there is a tail sort of tail bone
in here, got to make sure you don’t cut that
off, it does happen people have cutted these
off, these clippers are super sharp, so always
make sure you know where that is, and the
best way to do that is keep your thumb on
top of it and then clamp it in, then that
means if your going to cut it off, your gonna
hit your thumb first
Doing the head is pretty tricky because you’ve
got floppy things on the head like ears, imagine
them going in that, and obviously his eyes,
so you’ve got to be a bit confident in what
you’re doing guys with these, keeping in mind
that they’ve got head collars on so a lot
of their wools pulled down, so yeah slowly
slowly you don’t want to end up hurting them
Sculpting them sometimes harder than shearing
them laying down, take a lot longer, but uhm
yeah they look pretty cool if you spend a
bit of time doing their hair.
There he goes!
He looks a little bit shaggy, that’s because
he had so much wool on him, uhm but over the
next few days that’ll all smoothen out, i’ll
probably have to get him back in to get a
few more little uh cut’s which i can see,
but you can’t tell until you get them out
and let them go, but yeah apart from that
he’s looking good.
So im gonna bag this up, it’s lovely brown
fawn colour, uh amazingly soft again uhm yeah
we’re gonna make some nice wool, so you can
see how fine it is, super fine.
Next up is Big Milky Joe – I call him big
milky Joe, he’s the double of Milky, nice
and fluffy, good body score first thing we
need to do is to try and get a bit of this
dust out, so Alpacas like a dust bath and
they love a dust bath before you shear them
so the blades don’t work as good
come on big guy!
so Alpacas generally – they’re scared of these
mats, they don’t like the look of them, different
texture on their feet so sometimes there a
bit nervous, nice and slow, you’ve got to
convince them to go on it.
Good lad, you can ease them in by just reassuring
them and at the same time as reassuring them,
give them a clean!
Get all of this dust out off them, this would
be great spot for shearing, but he’s not tied
in place yet.
All we can do is pull him up.
There we go, there we go he’s in place.
So what they’re scared of when they come into
these pens is the noise of this once they
get used to the vibrations and the noise they
calm down a little bit, but it’s always important
to have sharp blades, the sharper the blades
the easier it goes through their fleece and
that dust, uh so always keep an eye on them.
And as you can see it all falls off, this
is their main blanket, super fine, super clean
underneath and i wish you could feel it, it’s
super soft.
So why we have to put a lot of oil on the
blades is because Alpaca fleece is hypo-allergenic
so basically theres no oil in the fleece so
it dosent oil the blades as you go through
em, it’s quite dry, so yeah lot’s of oil helps
the blades go through smoother.
da daaaa looks pretty cool, gotta keep them
cool for the summer, and his neck hair will
keep him warm for the winter, he’s free to
go!
Check out bobble head, got a big fluffy head
from last year, same again im probably just
gonna cut his necks, little bit of hair round
his head and just his main body, he’s very
confident this guy, little bit underweight,
he is an old boy though we need to get him
fattened up
So this is why it’s important, very important
to get their fleece off, so this is old mite
damage, can you see this flaky skin?
So he’s had some sort of mite activity there
but we treat it regularly uhm, we worm them
when we start seeing mites round their feet
or face, but yeah it’s good to see what’s
going on underneath the skin, and we can treat
this now, bit of skin cream and we’ll keep
a check on him, make sure he’s got no mites,
send a sample away and see if theres anything
live going on there, you know they sort of
thrive underneath their fleece sometimes,
so we need to get it off, see what’s going
on so we can treat it.
That’ll soften it up, it dosen’t look great
but it’ll soften up it, all that dried skin,
and he’s got a little bit on his belly, there
we go, he can go out now, let his mates
here he goes look at his sudocream!
his mates are gonna love that, so what i do
now is i make a note, check him in a couple
of weeks, see if them mites have dried up,
if not, treat them again.
uhm so yeah great product for bird nesting
next!
next up is Johnny!
Johnny Psycho/Johnny One-Ball who is super
dirty, hey fella, you okay?
Right let’s get him in let’s get him sheared.
Another episode done, thanks for tuning in
guys, hope you enjoyed that little video,
we are going to be shearing one more alpaca,
he’s called hagrid, he’s a super fluffy one,
it’s been trending on tiktok recently so we’ll
show you all that next time, uh but as you
can see a few hours shearing, we’ve got all
this amazing fleece, which we’re gonna take
back clean and process and turn into beautiful
balls of wool for you guys to buy.
Uhm so yeah thank you guys and see you on
the next episode.
Hagrid!
got a joke for ya!
How do Alpacas wake up in the morning?
They use there Allama clock!
HAHAHAHAHAHHAHA
Have you heard that one before?
