Golden Fleece

Drivers cruising through the rural town of Fabius sometimes hit the brakes when the sloping pastures of Claddagh Farm come into view. A few even turn in and slowly climb the gravel driveway, not to gaze at the spectacular view of the rolling hills that lie to the west, but to marvel at the regal creatures that graze nearby.

Proprietors Sarah and Carl Lamanna run one of more than a dozen Central New York farms raising a herd of alpacas: long-necked, cud-chewing mammals native to the Andes Mountains of Peru, Bolivia and Chile and prized for their luxurious fleece. This weekend the Empire Alpaca Association will welcome alpaca aficionados, prospective members and curious visitors to see nearly 400 of the exotic and beautiful South American camelids close-up at the Empire Alpaca Trifecta in the New York State Fairgrounds’ Dairy Cattle Barn.

Prior to this year, the 134-member organization held annual halter shows in October for judging of each entrant’s conformation in comparison to the ideal alpaca and for evaluating them for their fleece characteristics. But this year they’re raising the stakes by combining the halter show with two other events. 

“This year we’re calling it the Empire Alpaca Trifecta,” explains association president Cindy Cuykendall of Skaneateles. “Traditionally we have done a fleece event and an educational symposium in late winter. This year we decided to combine all three so that people don’t have to travel twice and they can get the education piece, they can show their fleece and they show their alpacas all under one roof.”  

Chris and Mickey Gilman of Jordan will be on hand not only to show some of the 52 alpacas currently grazing their 8½-acre spread, Riverside Alpacas, but also to market products from their companion business, A Alpaca Mill, where they process the fiber sheared from their animals and create a variety of handmade apparel and textiles products. 

The Gilmans purchased their first five alpacas in 1996 and six years later took the next step, building a mill onto their farmhouse and making a sizable investment to equip it with the machinery necessary to process alpaca fiber into yarn. “Everybody was having trouble figuring out where to get things done and how to get things done,” Chris Gilman recalls. “The backups at all the mills were a year.” 

One of five mills in New York processing alpacas’ fleece, A receives orders from all over the United States. In 2005, A won the national Golden Circle achievement award for completing the loop by using the yarn processed from their animals into hats, socks, sweaters, mittens, rugs, bedding and table runners. The business was also featured in a 2008 children’s book, When I Grow Up: A Young Person’s Guide to Interesting and Unusual Occupations.

Visitors to the Fairgrounds for the Trifecta will be invited to caress the thick plush coats of some of the alpacas, touching one of nature’s finest and most valuable products. While there are an estimated 3.5 million in wild herds in South America, alpacas have long been domesticated by the Incan people and treasured by their royalty, who demonstrated wealth by owning them in great numbers. Alpacas escaped extinction caused by their wanton slaughter at the hands of Spanish conquistadors in the 17th century when the Incas fled into the higher peaks, taking their herds with them. 

 

They’re gaining in popularity north of the equator with an estimated 140,000 head in the United States being raised for the commercial benefit of their fleece. Related to camels, llamas, vicunas and guanacos, the alpacas’ reputation for being relatively easy to raise and well-suited to a northern climate has enhanced their status among American ranchers. They’re known to be gentle and friendly to humans, making them readily handled and tamed. They’re also smart, trainable and require relatively little pasture space, grazing gently on native grasses. 

About 90 percent of alpacas in North America are of the huacaya (wah-KI-yah) variety, with dense, crimped fleece. The other type, Suri (SUR-ree), have a finer fiber that grows parallel to the body. Alpacas come in 22 colors of plush, dense fiber, which is softer than cashmere or angora, warmer and lighter than wool, and hypoallergenic. The largest obstacle for some owners is the initial investment, as the animals can be quite pricey, up to $30,000 for one breeding female, although you can spend much less, depending on age and characteristics. 

 

 

Each acre of farmland can accommodate as many as 10 alpacas, one of many characteristics that make them low maintenance compared to other livestock. It’s even easy to clean up after alpacas, as they naturally deposit manure in a specific location in the pasture rather than leaving droppings spread around as most herd animals do. There’s no need to spend a lot of money on heating their barn, even during the coldest weather, as they are best suited to frigid mountain habitats. 

“When they were domesticated, they retained those traits of being very efficient animals because they had to be,” Carl Lamanna says. “They eat grass, they really don’t eat much hay. You can give them their shots yourself. They aren’t like a cow or horse; you can restrain them yourself.” 

As with many domesticated animals, strategic breeding of alpacas results in more desirable offspring, making both the individual animals and the entire herd more valuable. Females are initially bred at about 18 months and have to be registered. DNA testing is employed to confirm paternity. 

Producing crias—baby alpacas—can be profitable, but it certainly isn’t fast, as the animals usually deliver one cria following a 345-day gestation period. Thus, careful planning to control mating is worth the effort. 

“This is a fledgling industry so the sky’s the limit as far as how much you can grow and add value to your farm just by adding more animals,” Sarah Lamanna explains. “We breed for color. Gray and black are hardest to get, so we keep trying, sometimes successfully, sometimes not so much. I also try to improve the quality and quantity of fiber produced.” 

Alpacas are generally sheared once a year, in spring. Unlike sheep, which are sheared while standing, alpacas, which usually weigh between 100 and 200 pounds, are strapped to a specially designed table. 

In addition to shearing their own flock, Chris and Mickey Gilman are hired by other farmers to do their shearing. “Pretty much the whole month of May and the beginning of June, we’re shearing every single weekend,” Chris says. “We just go farm-to-farm.”   

Some farms also keep the processing local by using the Gilmans’ mill, knowing that their service will get the personal touch of a family business. “A lot of the places we talked to wanted to combine your fiber with everybody’s fiber,” Chris Gilman explains. “Mixing it all together wasn’t what we wanted in our own herd and we also didn’t want to mix with everybody else’s. Some of my older girls and some of my younger girls shouldn’t be mixed because you’re going to lose quality. You need to keep it separate and sorted. To do that, we need small mills that run small, individual batches for individual farms, and that’s what we do.”

All of the fleece carried in for processing is first washed and dried. It then is fed into a machine called a picker, which opens the fibers and loosens dirt before blowing it out one end into a closet-sized room. It then gets weighed and fed through another machine, a carder, which combs it straight into sheets known as roving. A draw frame then aligns the fibers further and takes out anything that isn’t straight before the material is drawn out and spun into a single strand of yarn. A second twirl on the spinner plies strands together into yarn that is wrapped onto a bobbin. From there, the yarn is transferred to 200-yard skeins, washed again and then ready for the customer.  

The resulting products have the richness of wool without the irritating roughness, and it provides superior insulation. “It’s a hollow-shafted fiber,” Mickey points out, “where if you look at sheep’s wool under a microscope, it’s got little barbs on it. This is five times warmer than any wool product because of the hollow fibers.” 

Chris Gilman’s mother Beverly Meade works looms to make rugs and hand-knits products from the yarn that comes out of the mill. Some of the socks and mittens sold by the business are made in New England, but none are imported. “What we do is all American,” Chris assures. 

Raising alpacas is the first livestock ranching endeavor for both the Lamannas and the Gilmans. Before moving to Fabius, the Lamannas had been living on a few acres on the edge of Baldwinsville. 

“About five years ago Sarah and I decided that we both enjoy living in the country and we enjoy the country lifestyle,” Carl Lamanna recalls. “We learned about alpacas through a friend of hers. We invested in two animals and we boarded them—the term is agist, you don’t board alpacas, you agist them. Then after a couple of years, we found this place and decided to raise our own herd.”

Both partners work off-site, Sarah as a teacher in the Phoenix Central School District, Carl as a technician at Syracuse Orthopedic Specialists. “We were up to four or five animals after two years,” Carl says. “We’re up to 21 now and probably next year we’ll be up to 25 or 26. We’ll probably top out at 30 or 40 animals, which is a manageable herd for us.” 

Although Mickey Gilman grew up on a dairy farm in Potsdam, he and Chris were enjoying life on the Seneca River when Chris’ sister introduced them to the idea of raising alpacas. “We were one of the early New York farms {to raise alpacas},” Chris relates. As daylight fades, their month-old crias run and play, apparently carefree under the watchful eye of the Gilmans’ massive Great Pyrenees dog, Apollo, who will surely give any interloper, two-legged or four-legged, a hostile reception. 

“Around dusk the babies race around the field as fast as they can go,” Chris Gilman marvels. “They’re quick, like deer.” Nearby, their tomato garden, fertilized with alpaca manure, flourishes.

Alpacas fit nicely into a peaceful countryside as they occasionally bray softly, but don’t generally make much noise. “They hum when they’re anxious,” Sarah Lamanna says. “If they perceive a threat, they’ll do an alarm call like a donkey.” 

Like other camelids, they can express irritation by spitting. When a male approaches a female for breeding, an unreceptive female may spit at him. “Usually they don’t spit at me and they don’t spit at people so much,” Sarah Lamanna says. “But they spit at each other and you can get caught in the crossfire.” 

The chill of fall gets customers thinking about warm clothing and there’s none warmer than alpaca products, which are hot sellers at autumn crafts fairs and harvest festivals. Visitors to the Trifecta, running Saturday, Oct. 13, from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Sunday, Oct. 14, from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m., will find plenty of products for purchase. In addition, there will be fiber arts demonstrations, a display of different uses of alpaca fiber throughout North America, performance classes, a fashion show, spinning and weaving demonstrations, workshops on rug punching, talks on the basics of alpaca ownership, food vendors and even a costume class for kids. 

“The costume class is a riot,” Cuykendall raves. “What you do is dress your child and your alpaca based on a theme, and you write a little story and the announcer reads the story as the child and the alpaca parade around the ring. They win prizes.” 

Seminars are open to show participants and the general public. Admission is free. Complete information is on the website, empirealpacaassociation.com.