UK Alpaca is collecting fleece now. Lucky you if you have finished shearing, we are only about half way through as it keeps raining. Summer, what summer? is the cry down here. Anyway we have upped the price on white baby and fine paying £12 a kilo plus VAT and £8 a kilo plus VAT with the colours at £8 a kilo and £5 a kilo. It is all pretty simple, once the fleece has been graded we send the grower a report, they send an invoice and in the fullness of time Chas writes a cheque! You can buy back yarns at wholesale with no minimum quantity. Big boxes of yarn are arriving every day now. This is the stuff that has been dyed and is coming back from the ballers so by next week we should be in stock on everything and have our range of 2/9nm in the natural colours as well.
We have fourteen cria on the ground now, mostly girls, a much better ratio than last year. There are about 50 still to go, at least 20 due now who are doing the beached whale number but not getting on with it. That’s alpacas for you, they do things at their own pace and it is mostly a slow one.