Alpacas of Kopavi Ranch, Inc. Your open door to the colorful world of alpacas 3703 Alsea Highway Phone/Fax: (541) 563-4719 Email: kopavi@cria.com Waldport, OR 97394  Mindy & Tony Simon http://www.cria.com

A few words defined
 

Crimp

Crimp is the amount of curl that the fiber has.  The best way to view crimp is to gently split the fiber on an animal open and look at how much wave or curl you can see all the way down to the skin.  Crimp adds elasticity and memory to fiber when it is spun into yarn and then made into a final product (important for ribbing, etc.).  See our stud pictures for examples of good crimp.

Density

Density refers to how closely each individual fiber grows to the next one.  The best way to determine density is to grab a handful of fiber on the animal.  Try having a very dense animal stand next to a not so dense animal and grab a handful in each hand.  Can you feel the difference?  The dense animals fiber should fill your hand well while the not so dense animal will compact down to a smaller amount.  Once you do this several times, you'll be able to tell the differences better.

Coverage

Coverage refers to how much of the alpacas body the fiber covers.  When people say that an alpaca has good coverage that usually means he has longer fiber covering most of his legs all the way to his toes.  It also might refer to having lots of fiber on his face, even covering his eyes.

Handle

From my experience, handle is the most important characteristic of alpaca fiber.  It's also the most difficult to quantify.  Handle refers to the feeling of the fiber.  The best way to learn about handle and really understand it is to work with the fiber as much as you can.  A lot can be determined by processing the fiber for spinning, and even more by spinning it.  You'll notice in the next definition, that the industry standard for measuring softness is by measuring the fineness of the fiber.  However, I have worked with many an alpaca fleece that is much coarser than another, but is much softer.  The reason for this is that though coarser, it had a much better handle.

Fineness

Fineness is the average diameter of each individual fiber in the alpacas fleece.  To measure fineness, many breeders send a clipping of fiber to a fiber testing facility, such as Yocom-McColls in Denver.  I highly recommend visiting their site to learn more about the process.  The report that comes back includes a measurement in microns which is the average diameter of fibers in that sample.  The report also has other valuable information on it.  Typically, the finer the fiber, the smaller the micron count, the softer the fiber is.  However, please read about handle above to learn more on softness.

Uniformity

Uniformity refers to the consistency of an alpacas fiber across the entire fleece.  To determine some aspects of uniformity, you can take several fiber samples from different areas on the animal and send it in to a fiber testing facility.  Other aspects such as crimp, density, and handle are better determined by observing the fleece on the animal.  Good spots to check are: middle side, just above rear and front legs, upper legs, and neck.  You should expect the legs and neck to differ slightly, but the closer the fiber is, the better the uniformity.

Color

One wonderful aspect of alpacas is the wide range of colors they naturally come in.  For many years the industry used a color chart with 22 unique colors on it.  They have since simplified the chart, but that doesn't mean the animals come in fewer colors.  The mill in Peru that the national fiber co-op uses to process fiber offers 24 natural colors.  And we often have animals that don't exactly match any of those colors.  Though it is a bit harder to find darker colors with as strong fiber characteristics (crimp especially) as the white or light alpacas, we feel it is very important to keep a wide range of colors available in alpacas.  And to work on improving the characteristics of the colors as well.

Secondary Fiber

Secondary fiber is often refered to as guard hair.  A secondary fiber is often seen on multi colored animals and is a straighter, less crimpy, and sometimes coarser hair that can be seen.  It's easy to see a secondary fiber when the animal has at least a couple inches growth and stands against a contrasting background.  You can see the straighter hairs sticking out from the rest.  It is really a misnomer to call this hair guard hair as it is often not coarser than the other fiber.  Though it can sometimes add a bit of prickle factor to processed fiber (because it is straighter and sticks out more), it also may not.  Fiber that we have processed containing secondary fiber has ranged from no difference at all, to a fuzzy look but no extra prickle, to fuzz and extra prickle.  Some determination can be made on how much prickle a fiber may have by looking at the Standard Deviation and Percent of Fibers over 30 on the Yocom-McColl testing report.

Luster

Luster refers to the sheen or shine that alpaca fiber can have.  Suri alpacas have more luster than Huacayas do.  We have had a couple Huacayas out of Suris that have very nice sheen.  We also have several animals that just seem to produce good luster.  We've found that the more luster a fiber has the better handle it will tend to have.  So it can be a very important aspect to consider.