Laurel Shouvlin’s fingertips disappeared into an alpaca fleece as she felt for a piece of the fiber to extract. Taking one from the mid-side, another from the lower part and a final from the shoulder, she assembled a line of the curly, beige fur to assess.
“None of them are perfect,” Shouvlin said, scoring the fleece’s length uniformity 4.5 out of five.
The Springfield, Ohio, farmer was in Northern Kentucky over the weekend for the annual Alpaca Owners Association National Education and Fiber Conference and Fleece Show. Though none of the animals attended, more than a hundred alpaca owners gathered at University of Kentucky’s Boone County Extension Office to learn about their industry.
Conference events ranged from fleece demonstrations on how to make products to lectures about pasture management.
“We cover the gamut as far as the education goes,” said Jennifer Hack, Alpaca Owners Association board president.
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The three-day event brought together a community of alpaca owners from across the U.S.
“They're very happy to share their knowledge with each other and help each other out and I think that's kind of a unique aspect to the whole industry,” Hack said.
In the judging room, Shouvlin talked with friends as they stopped by her table. She was working among a dozen people who volunteered to judge hundreds of alpaca fleeces.
Ohio’s prevalence as an alpaca farming state
The weekend conference was held across the river from the state with the most alpacas. Hack remembers when alpaca owners would call Ohio “Little Peru.”
“Alpacas are from Peru and there were just so many farms in Ohio, that was kind of how it was coined,” she said.
Today that reputation is less popular, “Not because there's less alpaca in Ohio, but more because there's more alpaca farms throughout the country now,” Hack said.
There are 26,001 registered alpacas in Ohio, according to the Alpaca Owners Association.
Although the animals are not native to the U.S., they are adaptable. That makes alpacas able to withstand Ohio’s variable climate.
The sustainable draw of alpaca fleece
Alpaca fiber is presented as a sustainable alternative to wool and other materials.
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“Sheep’s fiber typically has a lot of lanolin and grease in it,” Shouvlin said. “Alpaca fiber does not, and so it doesn't take as many chemicals and washings and hot water to clean it to get it prepared for converting into yarn.”
Raising alpacas is also less disruptive to land because of the animal’s foot structure.
“Instead of a hard hoof, they have a toenail that goes over the top, and so they have a padded foot underneath so that doesn't tear up the pasture,” Shouvlin said.