Alpaca

These increasingly popular animals provide alpaca fibre. They are camelids and originally natives of Chile, Peru and Bolivia. Other camelids include llamas, vicuna, guanaco and camels.

There are two main types of alpaca: huacaya and suri. Huacaya is the more common of the two and has a fluffy coat. The suri coat is both lustrous and wavy; the fibre also grows much longer, similar in comparison to short and long-wool sheep. 

Around 20,000 alpacas live in the UK and many owners are members of the British Alpaca Society. Large numbers are also bred in Australia where a lot of research has been done to improve the quality of fibre.

Most camelids have a double coat combining both coarse and fine hairs, but alpacas have a fine, soft fleece. Some alpacas may also have coarser 'guard' hairs, which increase with age.

Alpacas come in 23 colours ranging from white to black and dark brown including chestnut and ginger. These are our names for the colours, not the official ones! Like mohair, it is hair rather than wool and feels smoother.

The fibre qualities are baby, adult and coarse, but as with sheep, due to the wide varieties of breeding, adults can produce finer fibre than babies. Generally the micron count increases with age: it is usually under 20 for baby, 20-27 for adult and over that for coarse.

Each animal produces a wide variety of hair, much more so than sheep or goats. The best comes from the back and sides, the worst from the legs and there is currently no market for this. 

Some of the fibre is lustrous, but the crimp is generally low. The fibre can be difficult to spin, particularly if very fine. We have used 50-50 blends of leg and coarse fibre together with strong wool and produced some successful carpet yarn.

Some alpaca owners are more interested in the animals than the fibre they produce and are happy to sell it although they are often less than happy with the going rate. There have been attempts to set up national co-operatives, but nowadays owners tend to work alone, in groups or consortia.

We can often put owners in touch with potential partners, and there are now active regional groups in many parts of the UK.