Cria Shearing

I don't think I posted when we had Twilight shorn. We did this a few weeks ago. We try to have our cria shorn when they are about 6 weeks old. We've done it earlier in years past, and found that it didn't get all the tui tips (tui tips are what they call the fiber that the cria are born with). I don't want to spin the tui tips into yarn because it's a little different than what grows in later on.

Here is Twilight a couple weeks after shearing:



Tonight we had Chaska and Challenger shorn. They were born within a week of each other so we waited with Chaska until Challenger was old enough. We take our cria over to Ashton Stones Alpacas, where they do a nice job shearing the cria.

Chaska before shearing:



Challenger before shearing (front then back):




By the time we got home and had a chance to get pictures, it was getting dark out. So these pictures aren't the best. We were quite happy to see all the grey on Challenger. That doesn't show up well either. We'll get more pictures in a couple weeks when we get around to trimming up their top knots and make them even more handsome.

Here are the boys, all shorn:




We are eager to see how both of these boys' fiber grows back in.