Alpaca herd software, shearing

Published 8th May 2014 | By Helen Kendall Smith

well it appears I am not the only one who is unhappy with the Herd software! but it also appears that no one has created one that satisfies all – lets get designing please.

All preparations for shearing thwarted due to rain.

Few folk realise that Alpaca cannot be shorn wet.

it is not just the electrical danger, it is the fact that the shears will not go through wet fleece and there is nowhere to dry them.

with the average fleece laid out being 7ft x 4ft approximately, thats ok for a few but not many have the facilitiy to dry more than a few out.

So barning is essential for dry fleeces which means:

Around 40 Alpaca to shear soon with torrential rain forecast. Has to be done inside obviously.

They have to be bone dry or the shearers – who book the date a year in advance per herd – cannot shear them.

So during the course of advance preparations all Alpaca will disappear from the fields into the barns – as I get them in – to be kept dry until shearing– as the weather is going to be dire.

They have to be monitored, fed, hayed, watered and mucked out from now until the weather improves enough for them to return to the fields newly shorn.

High risk of hypothermia if permitted to get cold and wet at anytime but especially when just shorn.

Peru – its hotter of course when they shear and they do not have our weather to contend with!

With one female already 3 weeks and 5 days overdue on giving birth to the first Alpaca to be conceived here – it’s bound to happen on shearing!

She is lilting like the Titanic on a daily basis …

I’ll keep you posted on that one.

meantime before it started raining:

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