Is incredibly tiring work, you wouldn't believe it.

 

Has anyone else ever sheared an animal before or helped with it?

 

It takes a team of people to shear each alpaca, and even more to shear a llama. Two pulleys to shear a llama even, the alpacas only take one pulley each, I can post pictures and explain the process more if anyone is interested. Right now though I'm just exhausted, it was hours of work from 4 am to about one or two pm and then we had to load them up, take them home, unload them...

 

I'm definitely showing you all pictures of what they looked like before and after shearing huge difference, and this seems like the board to talk about it since we have another llama thread going :D

 

Right now though I can't upload photos because we have limited internet. But if anyone's ever had questions about alpaca or llama grooming I can probably answer it! Or on handling for that matter, very tiring but educational day. :D

 

I came home and passed out on the couch, haha!

 

We also helped with getting some sheep sheared, and as it turns out, a sheered sheep is like greased lightening! They are so hard to keep a hold on, especially without a halter!

Hahaha I know what you mean by sheep! I used to do it all the time with the help of one of my brothers when I was a boy. It was sooooo hard at first since it was always moving and I was scared to death I was going to hurt it with the blade shear, but after doing it for awhile, me and my brother sort of learned to "roll with the punches" . Never done anything larger than that though ~ not really any alpacas and llamas here !

Lucky! I didn't get to do the actual shearing, I mostly just wrestled all day. The llamas and alpacas are easier to handle with their long necks, so I don't envy you there. Did your sheep also come out of the pen calmly and docilely, allow themselves to be sheared calmly and floppy and then out of no where when you're leading them back start kicking and screaming and wiggling all over? Haha, they are sneaky little buggers :)

 

And, yeah the shears look kind of worrisome at first, I think two sheep got nicked but all of the other animals were fine. When shearing the sheep he'd flip them and hold on to the front legs and they'd just flop and get dragged about. Did you do it like that or with a stand? And how many sheep did you have? I'm jealous, I really want sheep...

Oh yeah they were real quiet usually before and during the shearing - then suddenly they go crazy after it is done and you need to put them back in the pen! I was always afraid that if I lost control of it and let it run, it would go off into the woods and I would not be able to find it and I would catch hell for it. Never happened, though, so I do not actually know where the sheep would run to if you released it ~ whether back into the pen or somewhere else. It still is a mystery ! Do you perhaps know? We never had a stand so we just had to manhandle them and we only maintained about 9-12 - my family's farm was mainly for producing what we needed and selling what we could not use, not one of those gigantic things that sell most of their crops, wool, dairy, whatever. I suppose there are not many bare subsistence farms nowadays, as I like to call them hahaha. With everything else that had to be done and with only some extended family sometimes (which means next-to-no-times) helping as hands, you really could not look after more than that very well and that many cluns gives you more than enough wool and milk anyhow (and meat on occasion).

What? No other farm or ex-farm folk in the Black Tower???

Haha, at least none that have found this yet :P

 

Or else we're the only two farmers, but hey, that makes us more like the Dragon, aye?

 

Yeah, I know! I wasn't expecting that, haha. The alpacas are the opposite, huge fit before shearing and then they decide they don't feel like walking anymore and you have to pretty much carry them all back to their pens, haha. So doing the sheep after hours of that was a nightmare since we'd been at it long enough to flip on autopilot and then that messed it all up, haha.

 

Whenever we had any go they would bolt for a bit and then if you didn't chase them they'd wander back and stand on the opposite side of the fence from the rest of the herd... but we also made sure to have people inbetween them and complete freedom so that may have effected it. The alpacas were the same in those regards :)

 

Yeah, our four alpacas are also just hobby farmish, using what we need, selling the rest, but not depending on it. I don't know about the others, we helped them do their herd and then they help shear ours so we all just get the animals together and work it out. Otherwise I doubt any of the families would have had enough help, haha. And I love how 9-12 sounds like such a small number but is actually so much work! Even just our four alpacas was difficult for shearing, and with the sheep why waste money on a stand when you can make do so incredibly easily without? We only had this rope thing set up for the alpacas and that was about it.

 

It would be very difficult to maintain a bare substance farm without a big family or lots of farm hands, I think a lot of nowadays are actual industries.

 

And Nyanna is a farmer too, just wait until she finds this, farmer channelers unite! Especially since in the book the Black Tower kind of farms, haha! :D

That sounds awesome! I've never had someone walk beside me trying to shave my hair off. Hehe! Maybe if they gave me a pizza pocket.

lol

 

I did shave my hair of once. I did not suit me. lol It was even worse when it started to grow back. The hair laid down on the sides but stood right up on the top of my head. When I finally had gotten some hair my sister was kind enough to offer me a haircut and dying my hair. After that I looked like Spock with purple hair...

 

And back to llamas...

*writes huge message, safari quits on her while posting >:[ *

 

I've been wanting to shave my head since my hair is heavy so I might end up exactly like that, haha :D

 

With the llamas I have a hard time explaining the process, two people hold the llama, two-four people get ropes on the llama and another person runs with a rope to secure the llama through a pulley... I don't know, it sounds confusing no matter how I try to word it, hopefully I get it out better later.

 

I put the pictures in spoiler boxes so you don't have to wait on all of them to load when we're talking later and you've already seen them :P

 

Here are two llamas being sheared:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here are my llamas before shearing:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here they are after shearing:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Big difference.

 

Here was a cute lamb I saw there:

 

 

 

 

And this is how redneck people transport alpacas:

 

 

 

 

And yes I am the weirdo in the pink/orange shirt.

 

I had it written out better before but I don't want to spend too much time rewriting everything in case it crashes again :(

Oh, they looked so much better before. How long does it takes before it grows out again?

Hahaha they look weeeeeird without all that wool on them! "And here is how redneck people transport alpacas" - I died with laughter hahahaha~! Do you have horses? I just see what looks like horses in the background of the redneck picture and am wondering if those are yours. I love horses! I always wanted to have one (or several is better hehe), but the closest thing we ever had to one was a highland pony who always tried to bite me - no one else, just me!

I know, haha! It takes a couple weeks, they look silly for some time afterwards hahaha!

 

Yeah, we have two horses, Pollo and Pokey, haha. Aww, sad I hope you get your horsies some day, we have one that can be ridden and I really want to have more than that so I can ride horses with other people instead of one at a time haha

 

What kind of horse do you want?

I'm surprised there hasn't been any Ayla/Nya llama spam here, but yeah sheared alpaca = lolz

I haz no experience of shearing anything, apart from that one time my pa tried to shave teh dog >.>

 

But AWW! NAKED LLAMAS!!

 

We did just bath teh dogs and now they are running around insanely trying to dry themselves on anything and everything :)

That could be a bumper sticker! LOL.

Haha, it could be a bumper sticker! And yeah, whenever Nya finds this she'll probably spam it up for us :D

 

How did the dog look shaved?

 

My dog Pi rubs his head on everything once he's been cleaned... and also after eating chicken.

Like a dodgy lamb >.>

Ben dog likes to shove his face in my boot and wipe his eyes all over the inside. Tis very ew :)

And Gracie (naked lamb dog) likes to roll in cow pats

Aww, I hate it when clean dogs roll in things :/

Naked lamb dog...Hahaha!

Do you have pictures of your sheared doggies?

I'd like to see as well.

Especially if there are also before pictures ;)

I can find no sheared pictures :(

But ill look for normal pictures when i finally gets back on teh puter

Alright, thank you! No matter what they'll be cute to see :D