Fiber

My goal is to breed alpacas with the fineness of cashmere and the crimp of merino. Fineness is measured in microns and finer fiber has a smaller micron count. As an example, human hair can have a micron count of 40-80+ while most cashmere is in the 15-19 micron range. Alpaca fiber can range from 15 -40 microns—depending on their breeding and age—with younger animals having the finest fiber. more »

There are no perfect alpacas. There is great room for improvement in all of our herds, and we can watch it happen before our eyes in our very own pastures, when we make good breeding choices. Once you learn to judge alpaca conformation and fleece, you'll see that not even blue ribbon winners are perfect. Learning to evaluate fleece will help you to make the best breeding choices for your alpacas. more »

Softness of apparel textiles is a major attribute sought by consumers. There is surprisingly little objective information on the softness properties of rare animal fibres, particularly cashmere, alpaca and mohair. Samples of these and other rare animal fibres from different origins of production and processors were objectively measured for fibre diameter, fibre curvature (FC, crimp) and resistance to compression (softness). While there were curvilinear responses of resistance to compression to FC and to mean fibre diameter, FC accounted for much more of the variance in resistance to compression. Fibre type was an important determinant of resistance to compression. The softest fibres were alpaca, mohair and cashgora and all of the fibres measured were softer than most Merino wool. Quivet, llama, camel, guanaco, vicuña, yak wool, bison wool, dehaired cow down and Angora rabbit were also differentiated from alpaca, mohair and cashmere. There were important differences in the softness and FC of cashmere from different origins with cashmere from newer origins of production (Australia, New Zealand and USA) having lower resistance to compression than cashmere from traditional sources of China and Iran. Cashmere from different origins was differentiated on the basis of resistance to compression, FC and fibre diameter. Cashgora was differentiated from cashmere by having a lower FC and lower resistance to compression. There were minority effects of colour and fibre diameter variation on resistance to compression of cashmere. The implications of these findings for the identification and use of softer raw materials are discussed. more »

Much has been written about crimp and the relationship with curvature, frequency and microns, as well as curvature and compression. Many of the comments you hear are fact and fiction. We have heard the crinkle theory, the popcorn theory and various statements like “crinkle provides bulk which is created by the air pockets” (processors have concerns re the lack of bulk in Huacaya fibre – products too heavy) and of course that “crimp frequency is a reliable indicator of fineness”. I will demonstrate quite clearly that well-defined crimp is more consistent in its relationships with crimp frequency, curvature and micron. more »

Information on the relationships between micron, curvature, crimp frequency and character. more »