ALPACA FIBRE and WOOL

Precious fibre, valuable wool

but

Alpaca Fibre ¼ Alpaca Fibre

Alpaca Wool ¼ Alpaca Wool

INTRODUCTION

Italpaca has made it part of its policy to push the fibre aspect of alpaca keeping and breeding.

The lengthy debate at the last AGM of Italpaca indicates that the association has to take steps in order to better educate members with regard to aspects affecting and determining the quality of alpaca fibre produced by them, and to obtain/generate actual figures and data to both refute certain statements in future, and to have a tool that might help to better manage the (still small) production in future.

In the following I will try to summarise the current situation, and list and explain a number of important points that members should know and understand, if they are serious about the fibre aspect of their animals. Without a minimum of basic knowledge a serious discussion is impossible.

PRESENT SITUATION AND IMPORTANT ASPECTS

1.  Most members appear to be interested in the fibre aspect of keeping alpacas.

2.  The interest, with a few exceptions, appears to be the based on purely financial considerations.

3.  Most members appear to have an at best rudimentary knowledge regarding fibre quality, etc.

For them every alpaca, but in particular their own, produces high quality wool, which should command a high price.

Most people are, amongst others, not aware of the following:

a)  Alpaca does not equal alpaca, and alpaca fibre is not automatically a precious fibre.

b)  The best quality wool is restricted to certain parts of the body (back and sides, as shown in Fig. 1).

Fig. 1; Only the fibre from the Ottimo Mantello should be used.

Fig. 3: Fibre fineness relative to different uses.

j)        There is a difference between woolen and worsted threads. Determined by end use. For sweaters, and similar, worsted is preferred.

k)      100% processed alpaca wool is generally preferred and commands a relatively high price. It is nevertheless important to know that certain blends (e.g. superfine/wool/synthetic, note: not baby!) are even more precious.

l)        Staple length: 7-10 cm is sufficient for all purposes (woolen and worsted). Staple length + density = volume and fleece weight. Differences from one animal to another are in the range 5 ñ 16 cm p.a. 12 ñ 13 cm can be considered normal (this should be the aim in selected breeding in Italy).

Regrowth tends to decrease with age. Shearing at two years interval is not recommended, for both fibre quality and health reasons.

m)   Density: means number of hair follicles per mm² of skin, in particular secondary follicles. Dense fleeces tend to be cleaner!

n)      Crimp and Crinkle: often used as synonyms. It is also referred to as curvature (measured by laboratories in deg/mm). Some people use the term crinkle when talking about individual fibres, crimp when referring to the overall waviness of the fleece. Itís importance, or otherwise is the subject of heated debate at present. VicuÒas donít have pronounced crimp, and suris have no crimp. The term generally refers to waviness of fleece. Crimp does not automatically mean higher density. Fleece without crimp can also be of highest quality.

Crimp in alpaca fibre is much lower than e.g. in that of Merino sheep, resulting in alpaca fibre having a low resistance to compression. Fine alpaca generally has more crimp, but this is not necessarily desirable with regard to the spinning performance when making worsted products.

For both woolen and worsted processing, fineness and CV are by far the most important properties with regard to spinning performance. Fineness is positively correlated with age, body weight, clean yield and staple strength, negatively with average curvature and staple length.

In short: crimp has no real significance for the industry (yet?), but is popular amongst breeders because it is easily recognisable, and may be an indicator of fineness. In many shows around the world crimp is by many judges regarded as a positive aspect of fleece.

Fig. 4: Deep crimp (left) and less deep (right).

Fig. 5: Crimp frequency.

          o)      Medullation is the hollow space inside most medium and coarse alpaca fibres, and an undesirable aspect, particularly when uninterrupted, as, amongst others, it reflects lack of fineness (see Fig. 6. Note uninterrupted medullation in fibres >40mm).

Uninterrupted medullation can be compared to the quill of a feather, the hair becomes very stiff, which in turn causes problems during the spinning process.

Interrupted medullation on the other hand presents no problems. Acc. to some people it may even be desirable.

Medullation is likely to be a heritable trait, and not caused by environmental features or age.

Fig. 6:  Range of medullation in alpaca fibre (top), and close up of medullated fibre (guard hair).

p)      Suri fibre is rarely used 100% pure, it is usually blended. It does not bind well due to it's very tight scale structure (Fig. 7).

Suri fibre commands a high price, but not as high as baby or superfine huacaya.

Fig. 7: Scale structures of huacaya and suri.

q)      Fibre classification: the two main fibre buyers and processors apply the following categories:

* does not refer to a particular crossbreed, is simply a classification term.

r)      It is of great interest to note that in Peru only around 10% of all fleeces milled are baby or better (20-22m), and the same can be said about the quality of fleeces produced in the US. The reasons for the deterioration of the fibre quality in South America (the fibre of a 1000 year old alpaca mummy was found to have a fineness of 17.9mm and no fibre >30mm). are manifold: amongst others lack of interest by the Spaniards, owners concentrating more on quantity than quality (cross breeding with Llamas, etc.). Up to the late 1990s owners were paid per fibre weight and not for quality (fineness, etc.). Today this has changed and there are strong inducations that in todayís world market, looking for ever finer and lighter finished products, fibre >27mm is rapidly loosing value.

s)      Heritability: For every serious breeder heritability, i.e. the degree to which certain characteristics are passed on to the offspring, is a very important aspect. It should nevertheless be noted that in many instances for alpacas these are estimates only, or based on studies of other fibre animals.

Heritability is expressed in numbers ranging from 0 to 1, 1 indicating maximum heritability. Lower numbers indicate that environmental aspects are relatively more important than genetic ones, an important consideration when selecting animals for breeding based on phenotipe. Heritability of conformation, fiber density, fiber length, fiber fineness, and growth rate are all relatively high. A recent study of Alpacas in Australia indicates e.g. heritabilities of 0.67 for fineness and 0.90 for CV. With regard to all aspects of fibre quality, breeding can easily be based on phenotype. Here it should be noted that the phenotype can only be determined accurately by means of analyses and measurements.

4.      Italpaca, particularly in view of the importance assigned to fibre aspects within the Italpaca registry, has possibly not done enough to educate members accordingly. Letís hope that this brochure will be of some help.

CONCLUSIONS

Most members of Italpaca, incl. the majority of the council, and its consultants, view the fibre aspect of keeping alpacas as being of highest priority. This believe is also reflected in the Italpaca registry (R.A.) and the screening of animals at one year of age (see Section I of the R.A.), which sets the wool aspects at 60% of all attributes judged.

As a first step the members of Italpaca should have the fibre of as many of their animals as possible, preferably all of them, analysed by a reputable laboratory. This is of particular importance for owners/breeders which participate, or intend to participate in future, in any of the wool processing schemes organised by the Wool Committee.

The Committee has decided to make fibre analyses (e.g. at 2 year intervals) obligatory. This should enable the Committee to obtain, from at least part of the fibre produced, a truly high quality yarn.

The data generated in addition has the advantage to help the breeding efforts of the members, based on knowing the fibre quality of every animal, not only of those valuated at around one year of age.

RenÈ Steiger

February 2006

ITALPACA
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