“It is one of the industry’s biggest challenges, getting together big volumes of wool with a very tight co-efficient of variation and in the right colours. “Even a single animal can have an incredible range of fibre diameter – you might think it is the equivalent of a superfine sheep, around 16 micron, but there will be patches much stronger,” he said. “You have to bag every fleece individually because of the amazing micron fluctuation amongst animals, the colour of their wool and the fact there are only two main cuts – saddle and neck,” Shane explained. While a gun shearer can get through 200 Merinos in a day (and a lot more crossbreds), Shane reckons he can get through 20 or so a day – up to 30 on a really good day.įor a start shearing an alpaca means getting the animal to lie down, the tying it there, helping stretch its long body for easy access.įrom start to finish the process takes anywhere from 12 minutes to 15 or 16, depending on how much extra handling there is by way of teeth and toes, drenching and vaccination. It might sound too good to be true – but not exactly. “You have to shear them early enough so they have regrown enough fibre to protect them from the cold weather because we shear them as thoroughly as a sheep, maybe even closer, and they don’t have rolling skins and body fat to save them,” he said. “Even then, if you go in early you are running the risk of a cold snap and unless you are shedding you could be in trouble,” Shane said. Lean animals with low body fat wrapped in tight skins, they are incredibly vulnerable to cold snaps after shearing, so the only window is late spring to early autumn. Unlike your standards Australian Merino, alpaca cannot be shorn year round. He shears, classes, bags, trims toes and/or teeth, drenches and vaccinates. Now his shearing life is a blur, armed with his standard sheep combs and cutters (using the narrowest of the modern wide blades) he is as flat out as the proverbial lizard drinking once the season starts.Īnd not just shearing either – Shane is a complete one-stop service. “I even ended up doing one job for the breeder my first client purchased hers from.”
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“So, I went to Geelong to learn how to shear one of these new animals and started off doing a few for friends and neighbours, but word started to get around pretty quickly,” he said. “I pretty quickly realised there was a real opportunity with alpaca,” Shane said from his Wedderburn home. Seven days a week, every week (with maybe Christmas Day off if he has worked hard enough).īut not even that punishing schedule leaves enough days in a week to keep up with the demand for his services – he has so many orders he now has to subcontract to get through the shearing season. That was 13 years ago, and at the moment Shane is on his annual alpaca run, which stretches from late September/early October until deep into April. Until the day he went to do one particular property where the woman had both sheep and alpacas.Īnd told him in some detail how hard it was for any alpaca owners to find reliable shearers for this emerging breed.
He even dabbled around his neighbourhood, handling small mobs of 20 to 30 head – Merinos and crossbreds. Shane Winslett started out as a rouseabout in Victorian shearing sheds, picking up a bit of basic shearing along the way.
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