Fanciers extol
charms of alpacas | Gathering celebrates, informs about
the animals
By Winston
Ross
The Register-Guard, Monday, Jun 21, 2010
Let’s be clear about one thing right away:
Alpacas are not llamas.
The alpaca is, like the llama, a “charming and
valuable member of the camelid family,” according to the signage at the
weekend’s inaugural Alpaca Festival of Oregon at the Lane Events
Center. But they’re
camels without humps; goats with longer necks; sheep, but stretched out and
skinnier.
And like the llama, as Abbie Smith knows all too
well, alpacas spit. She got in between two of them once as they battled over a
food bowl at her 5-acre ranch along Lorane
Highway.
First came the warning “hum,” one of 17 variations
of odd sounds the creatures make that can resemble the squeak of a new tennis
shoe on a wet wooden floor. Then, the gurgling in the back of the throat; the
gathering of ammunition.
Thwap! Right in the face. Right down Smith’s light
pink silk top, in the middle of a workday.
Phlegm wars aside, Smith has no regrets about
buying six pregnant alpacas for her Silver Moon Alpacas, which have since
multiplied to 17. She wanted animals she didn’t have to slaughter, and in
researching the creatures, Smith learned that many prefer them to sheep.
They don’t have teeth on top, so they chop grass
off, rather than pull it out of the ground by the root, as sheep are wont to
do.
“They’ll make a pasture look like a golf course,”
said Rochelle Ammon, treasurer of the Willamette Alpaca Breeders Association,
which co-hosted the three-day gathering of breeders and sellers of alpaca fiber
and related products at the fairgrounds.
Alpacas have padded hooves, so they’re light on the
landscape, and their fiber — that’s the term farmers use instead of “wool” —
doesn’t require the chemicals often used in treating sheep wool to remove
grease, Smith said as one of her prized herd, Silver Cloud, stood in the
background, emitting his stress hum.
There were more alpaca facts, courtesy of Naomi
Chappell, who had just finished leading Otter, one of her family farm’s
2-year-old “huacaya” alpacas, through an obstacle course.
Huacaya, 8-year-old Naomi explained, is one of the
two types of Alpaca breeds. The other is “suri.”
The hair of a suri droops, resembling dreadlocks,
Chappell said. Huacaya alpacas have a fluffy head, “like a big snow cone.”
There’s one thing both breeds have in common, she
added:
“The more they eat, the more they poop, the more I
scoop.”
The weekend’s event had an ulterior motive to
hawking alpacas themselves and the myriad products they spawn — hats, booties,
socks, blankets, yarn, sweaters, shirts and even finger puppets. It’s to help
build a national herd, Smith said, to bolster the 200,000 registered alpacas
now in the United States.
Alpaca importation from Peru
and Chile
began in late 1970s, which means the animals have been used for livestock here
far less than sheep, and people aren’t as familiar with their benefits. While
they’re generally not butchered here — because there’s not enough meat on their
skinny frames — alpaca fiber is seven times warmer than wool, Smith said, and
softer, more like cashmere.
The hope is to persuade enough people to raise
alpacas so that some processing facilities will retool their operations for
alpaca fiber, which Smith thinks is a more sustainable, “greener” fiber. The
Pendleton mill recently reworked its plant, and she’s hoping others follow
suit.
“They are cute, cuddly teddy bears on stilts,”
said Ammon, who drives each weekend from Corvallis
to visit the two alpacas she boards at the Silvia Skies Farm in Scio. “Your day
is not made until you have an alpaca kiss.”
A kiss, mind you. Not a full-fledged spit in the
face.
