Shearing alpacas is very different from shearing sheep. Most of my alpacas take their haircuts in stride – Baby Sundae in particular is an absolute angel – but there is one alpaca who takes it personally. And Holy Mary on a Breadstick, does she ever let us know!

Alpacas, like their sheepy brethren, need an annual haircut, toenail trim and shots. Like the sheep, it’s important for their health and wellbeing – this is one of the only chances I’ve got to see what’s going on underneath that dense layer of floof and assess if everyone is eating enough, eating well and growing the way they should. This past winter was fairly co-operative, all things considered but it’s never wise to just assume everything is business-as-usual. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s to get hands-on with ruminants — as prey animals, they’re very good at hiding issues. Shearing is our chance to really get up-close-and-personal. . . there’s nowhere for the girls to hide when they’re naked.

Now, I have to say, alpacas are. . . a different beast to wrangle. Like I said, most of our girls are beautifully well-trained to be caught, to walk on a halter and to stand quietly. But their is one formidable exception. You may have heard me mention her before. . .

Barry and Shirley Charters, my alpaca mentors and our shearers, would like me to tell you that Freya wasn’t always the. . . outspoken character she is now. In fact, they both swear that when Freya was growing up at their farm, she was as sweet as honey. They tell me this while giving me sideways looks, as if they were wondering what on earth could possibly have happened to turn their darling little black-eyed sweetheart into the fiery harpy she is today. On this, I can provide absolutely no illumination. Freya is a force of nature and entirely her own being and as of yet, she hasn’t seen fit to take me into her confidence. I can tell you that Freya is the Norse goddess of beauty, love, war, fertility and death. Having spent quite a few years watching our own Freya from a safe distance, I can tell you that our girl is beautiful, she’s more than willing to go to war and I’m convinced she’d murder us in our sleep if she could.

Safe Shearing

It’s a funny thing . . . given her outsized personality, her willingness to wreak havoc at absolutely no provocation, you’d think Freya was our herd boss, but she isn’t. Freya, at most, is a sort-of trusty lieutenant. Dazzle is our actual boss, when she cares enough to exert herself. Most of the time, the alpacas are pretty happy to just wander around in that wide-eyed, semi-vacant way that they’ve got. Each of them has a very distinct personality — Dazzle is our laid-back leader, Suzy is our independent thinker, Sundae is the flerd’s party planner and Jubilee is our resident Nervous Nellie (I once saw her jump about a foot when a red squirrel went screaming up a tree trunk nearby). Now I don’t know if Freya took on the guardian role because it was assigned or if it was something she just naturally gravitated to. . . I can tell you that she and Clio, our Sharplaninac Livestock Guardian Dog, have a system that works for them. Most of the time, I leave them to get on with it and you can’t argue with how successful it’s been. The coyotes give our place a wide berth (and in fairness, wouldn’t you? An alpaca looks like some cartoon mash-up of a giraffe and an ewok but a pissed-off alpaca looks like something demonic, like a slavering, snakey laser-eyed gremlin. If confronted with Freya Most Foul, you’d make alternate travel plans too, trust me.)

So you can imagine that getting the ladies safely shorn is an operation I approach with about as much tactical strategy as a rocket launch. Of all the critters we have, Freya is the one who will give me the least amount of cooperation and the most potential for injury.

Step One: Transport

Getting the alpacas to Langdon isn’t actually as hard as it may sound. We usually confine the flerd in a night pen (this is to make things easier for the guardian dogs, Brian and Clio) and since I manage food access in that pen, I can ensure the girls are just that little bit hungry, a tiny bit of food motivation to get them moving in the right direction. Sheep safely out of the way, I back my trailer through the paddock gate and up to the barn doors. I load their breakfast buffet into the trailer and it doesn’t take too long before curiosity and hunger pull everyone aboard — usually led by Sundae who hasn’t met a green thing she wasn’t willing to give an experimental nibble. After that, it’s a simple matter of swinging the trailer door shut, securing all latches and hitting the highway.

Step Two: The Table

There’s some equipment beyond the usual plywood staging you may be familiar with if you’ve ever been to a sheep shearing or our Shearing Day. For alpacas, we use the same style of clippers but that’s where the similarities end. To keep everyone safe — and safely contained — alpaca shearers will use a specialized table, one designed to safely and gently restrain the alpaca, to hold their skin taut (this avoids any wrinkle nicks from the hand piece) and to keep them immobile for just long enough. We provide comfort by gently holding their heads, sometimes covering their eyes if that helps. While so restrained, we can vaccinate, trim toe nails, do dentals if needed and conduct a thorough physical exam.

Step Three: The Shearing!

This time around, we began with Baby Sundae, the Party Planner. She walked like the wee ballerina she is, mincing along, eyes bright and curious. While alpacas aren’t usually particularly friendly (and that’s the way you want them. You don’t want to excessively handle alpaca crias — baby alpacas — if you don’t have to. Alpacas, when they reach maturity, can develop Aberrant Behaviour Syndrome, largely the result of over-familiarization and improper imprinting on humans. This is highly HIGHLY dangerous), Baby Sundae has a naturally sunny, open and optimistic nature and she is everyone’s darling, a fact of which she is fully aware. A very matriarchal group, Sundae was the first baby ever to be born on the homestead which makes her Special and all her aunty alpacas treat her like a princess. She has no idea — none at all — that she might not be universally beloved. . . which is the way it should be.

Led to the table, Sundae submitted to her shearing with grace and was back in the pen in a tick. Our shearer, Barry and Shirley’s son-in-law, Jason, has been shearing for a long time now and knows his way around the girls fibre — they’re in excellent hands. We mowed through Dazzle (imperious and quiet), Suzy (muttered at us the whole time), Jubilee (closed her eyes and resigned herself to her fate) and then, with a fair bit of trepidation (me) and a raised eyebrow (Jason), it was Freya’s turn.

Step Four: Let’s Just Get This Over With

Freya refused to cooperate at every possible stage. She started threatening before we even got into the pen, her eyes looking very stabby inside the luscious lashes God put there to lull the unwary. Well aware of their colleague’s temper, the other alpacas tried to find some other corner to hide in while I caught Freya — inexpertly, I assure you — under the chin with my right arm and slipped the halter over her snarling muzzle. Then, with Jason as pilot and myself as rudder, we pushed and steered Freya to the waiting table.

Which is where the screaming started.

Ear Plugs and a Sock

In full voice, Freya sounds like Chewbacca getting steamrolled. She is no longer miffed, she’s not annoyed, she’s not “put out,” she is OUTRAGED. She might kick like a mule. She will try and throw her body weight around if she senses even the slightest opening. We, her glam squad, know her tricks of old and the table’s safety features are essential to getting this necessary task done. I can’t even imagine attempting to shear her in the standing position as I’ve seen some folks on YouTube do with alpacas who aren’t quite as feral as our Freya. . . Possibly with Sundae and Dazzle, definitely not with the others.

From her position on the table, the warbling shriek showing no signs of abating, Freya is more than happy to punctuate her noise with some well-placed gobby missiles. For those of you who have had the great good fortune never to receive an alpaca broadside, I can tell you that while it doesn’t hurt like a kick or a head-wallop (yes, alpacas will swing their heads around, using their necks like catapults, and hit with the kind of brutality that can do real and lasting damage), it is a nasty experience and the smell is an Offence Unto God — you can’t get rid of the smell, it doesn’t wash away, you have to more-or-less live with it until it wears away.

Shirley, bless her, has seen much worse than Freya she assures me. Her love for these animals — even the orneriest of them — is a tender thing to watch. Cradling Freya’s head in her arms, Shirley continues to stroke, to lovingly murmur, to encourage and to remonstrate even as a slimy green puddle spreads under Freya’s gaping jaws. When a particularly noxious cud packet skidded across the immaculate barn floor, Shirley reached behind her and twitched a sock — a clean sock — off the stall door and slipped it over Freya’s mouth and nose without missing a beat. The gentle endearments never stopped but I swear I saw a red flame kindle in the depths of Freya’s furious eyes. At least if Freya was going to spit, she would be the only one living with the consequences.

Freya registering her complaints. It never stopped, not once. By the end it felt more like she was screaming because it was expected, not because her heart was in it. Progress?

Was That Really So Bad?

After all that, getting everyone home was a simple procedure. True to her nature, Freya was the most obstinate when it came to loading her back on to her chariot trailer but careful driving and a few stops to check on the ladies well-being was reassuring — they were all kushed down in the deep straw, untroubled and as calm as could be. Backing once more to the paddock gate here at the homestead, we swung the trailer door open and the alpacas ambled off without an issue — save for a sneering backward glance from her Ladyship “Right,” I could hear her grind out. “I’ll remember that. Just you watch. I’ll remember that.“

De-floofed and feeling many pounds lighter, the alpacas have rejoined their sheep friends and I often find them in the paddock, splayed out in the sunshine looking for all the world like they’ve been shot and dropped in their tracks. Baby Sundae follows me around the paddock on my frequent visits humming and begging for a turn with the hose (alpacas love a good spray down — except for Freya. She dances out of range of the hose. My personal opinion is that if she got wet, she’d melt) while Dazzle, Suzy and Jubilee get on with ignoring the sheep and keeping a weather eye on Brian.

Another Shearing Done

And aren’t we all delighted? Yes, yes we are.

Freya, as her fibre is so fine — much finer than the others due, Barry thinks, to a more recent Vicuña ancestor in her family tree. Which may also account for Freya’s wilder disposition, now that I think of it — is only shorn every other year so she will always have enough fibre to protect her in our Alberta winters. As a result, her fibre has that gorgeous cloud-like softness, so different from the robust nature of my Border Leicesters’ fleeces.

Now that the girls are lighter, cleaner and considerably less impressed with us, their fibre is skirted and ready for its next life. For those of you who may be interested, I am thrilled to offer our lovely ladies’ blankets for sale. Sundae and Freya are light fawn, Dazzle, Jubilee and Suzy are all white. I hope you can turn our hard-won alpaca fibre into a tribute to the animal from whence it came!

This is a Tending post — a practical look at our tools, methods, routines, and on-the-ground decision-making. It’s not a one-size-fits-all how-to, and it isn’t meant to substitute for local knowledge or professional guidance. It’s just what we’ve found useful and what we’re doing here on our farm, in our conditions, with our sheep (and alpacas), written down plainly in case it helps. For more about why we do things the way we do them, the philosophy that informs our process, you’ll find those posts in Living.