Disclaimer: I don’t do small talk, I don’t do short and sweet… I like to delve deep! If your attention span is very short, this is probably not going to be good reading for you, because I prefer to present the bigger picture, the eagle-view, combining a broad range of facts that affect the topic at hand.
There are many common sense skills people seem to have lost along the wayside, one of them being how to determine a fair price for anything. They believe they have to look up at some ‘person of perceived authority’ for advice (I deliberately use the term ‘perceived authority’ because people give away their power because they THINK someone or somebody else has the ‘power’ to know better), to ‘set a price’, or they peep over the fence to see what the Jones’s are doing, because they don’t have any trust in their own ability to think it through. It seems people don’t really want to think anymore either, it’s almost like they are scared of their own thoughts, they might just realise everything is NOT what they are told it to be. And oh dear, that ‘herd-mentality’ really gets me down – people are so scared of beeing different, of standing out in a crowd, or standing up for something. They dare not be different… I believe common sense is on the brink of becoming extinct. To the extent that should a ‘person of perceived authority’ tell them to jab themselves with poison, people will do just that…
The purpose of this blog is mainly to show people how one SHOULD go about determining the price for something, like considering the real value, working out your costs, then adding a FAIR ‘income’ to that, with a definite emphasis on FAIR! One would usually have to take your expenses, and multiply that with 2.2, and you would reach a reasonably good price. But what if it’s not that simple, what if there are many factors to consider?
To do that, it is necessary to jog up that old grey-matter and to get the mind-gears moving… For this, you WILL need to do some of your own thinking!
I will also show how it should NOT be done! Let’s start with the latter!
It should certainly NOT be done through market manipulation and lies, where maximum profit is the name of the game! The latter process is usually applied by those who want to create money out of nothing. Because they are nothing more than leeches, parasites! Unable/unwilling/too lazy to do an honest day’s work themselves! The good news is that this cluster of satan’s spawn represent an extremely small part of the people on earth, I would say less than 0.1%.
But, sadly there are many, many good people who are caught up in this mentality too, scared to move away from it, even if they KNOW deep within that this is WRONG, because they dare not stand out, or be different! Because this 0.1 have managed to ‘domesticate’ their ‘herd of followers’ quite well. And many still don’t realise just how EVIL this mindset really is, what it inevitably leads to! It boils down to economic enslavement for EVERYONE, just not the 0.1%! With this mindset, right is made out to be wrong, and wrong is presented as being right! Because truth gets burried in lies, and lies are dollied up as truth!
I believe the Laws of the Universe will always ensure everything remains in balance, and therefore, even though some parasites are addicted to ‘create money out of nothing’ because they think the interest they earn on their investments or whatever other evil way they get away with ‘making money’ that they did not work for – be it on the share market, or some of the many criminal schemes that are constantly being devised and whitewashed under a seemingly innocent veneer, like the ‘record-breaking stud bulls/rams etc.’ which I will discuss below, and other Ponzi schemes, is just there for the taking, it really just appears from nowhere, and they are entitled to it because they are ‘clever’. No, it DOESN’T just show up like magic! It’s because they STEAL it. Thats called theft, in any language!
Because to create that money into reality, decent people WILL have to pay higher interest rates, inflated prices, more taxes, and even though it may appear their salaries or other income somehow increase, they will earn less and less because that same money buys less and less… And yes, when those decent people want to work out fair prices, they’re going to be affected by those who implemented some scheme to get rich quick, at the cost of the honest working class, because real money will have to balance some parasite’s fakery, because those leaches creamed off real money from real people, to create their own source of ‘money for nothing’. I have zero respect for those people. In fact, I don’t see them as humans, they’re ‘swamp creatures’.
Luckily, Nature has a way of shrugging off those parasites when a tipping point is reached, and like Jesus centuries ago, who took a whip and lashed out at the Pharisees – the Khazars running the show at the time, just like they do today – I firmly believe the world has finally reached a tipping point today… In fact, I believe we are all writing our final exams right now… People’s actions, or failure to act when necessary, will define where they go from here… The balance is about to be restored again, and I also believe it is important to take a stand as to where you fit in… Don’t be lukewarm, because you will be spat out with the swamp spawn! Remember, RIGHT is RIGHT and WRONG will always remain WRONG!
The opposite of this parasitic Babylonian Satanic system, is ‘earning an income the fair way’, working for it. You can do that by being a slave, or a freeman. A slave gets up to go to work in a place they don’t want to go to, doing something they hate doing, just to earn enough money to pay the expenses to go back to that work… A freeman discovered their creativity, their passion, their ‘juice’, and that you don’t need to ‘get rich’ from what you’re doing, you just need to be fair and enjoy what you’re doing, making the world a better place while doing so… On this path, the law of ONE is all that’s needed to light up your way… DO NO HARM!
So, people also need to know exactly WHAT it is from which they want to earn an income, what that product is, maybe it’s their skills, in this case I am working with alpaca fibre and my own skills, spinning, fibre processing, but this can be implemented in almost any niche you may be working with – everyone was born with a talent and/or interest and presented with an opportunity, they just need to regognise it, and preferably apply it positively! I will of course focus on alpaca here, because that’s what makes my heart beat faster! And as for the alpacas, I’m not going to reinvent the wheel, please look at our website page, all about alpaca! https://verlorevallei.com/all-about-alpaca/
I have heard quite a few remarks from people who believe alpaca fibre to be needlessly pricey, just a gimmick, and it’s just the same as sheep’s wool. This may be because alpaca is so scarce, so one cannot really blame them. Very few people really know what an alpaca is, what they look like, and especially what the fibre feels like, how deliciously soft, comfortable and warm it is, and that silky smoothness of Suri is a delight most people have never experienced. And spinning alpaca, well, it’s indescribable, you have to try your hand at it, in fact, it’s worth learning to spin just to experience it!
So, let’s get our duckies in a row and our facts straight, right from the start. It is said, a pictures speaks a thousand words…
Cupid, a male huacaya, before shearing
It is quite clear that he is in desperate need of a haircut, as it’s quite difficult to take a peep at the ladies on the other side of the fence, or the camera lady for that matter, with his hairdo getting in the way…
Finally, shearing time!
Cupid being shorn, halfway there! Shearing can be seen as the great equaliser, because once shorn, for a while anyway, both suri and huacaya look the same!
Two suris in front, with huacayas and one more suri at the back
A bag of suri fibre ready for processing
To understand the price of alpaca fibre, there are seven points to consider:
1. Scarcity
2. High alpaca prices
3. Number of offspring per year
4. Dual versus single-purpose animals
5. Alpaca is a superior fibre, in so many ways
6. The actual expenses linked to raising alpacas, most notably the difference in shearing
7. Processing their fibre into quality end-products
I think most of the older, more mature people among us will still remember the good old days when a price was determined by supply and demand, and not the profit-driven market manipulation of Fortune-500 Vanguard and Blackrock-owned corporations… It was based on real values. And then there is the fact that certain products, although sustainable, have a finite and/or seasonal supply.
Local products are also subject to a completely different set of rules, compared to foreign countries. What works in South Africa, doesn’t work the same way elsewhere, and vice-versa!
And I am not even touching on the criminally manipulative corporate mafia-controlled Customs dis-‘service’ in our country, just like every other country in the world, where they are basically collecting tolls to line their own pockets and block competitors of their bribe-paying ‘handlers’…
Alpaca fibre is a natural fibre, harvested by shearing alpacas once a year. Wool is another natural fibre harvested from sheep, which can be shorn twice a year, depending on the staple-length of their fibre. We do not really have long-stapled sheep in South Africa, but the mohair industry with Angora goats does have that issue to contend with, basically because the mills prefer a fixed length for processing purposes. And in all fairness, if you’ve ever processed any of these long fibres yourself, you’ll know it does pose quite a challenge… You may have to cut the locks in half to card them, or resort to combing. This applies to Suri too!
And while we’re on the subject of shearing, let’s put the minds of those gullible souls who are so easily revved-up by so-called ‘animal welfare agencies’ to rest. It’s worth noting, these ‘agencies’ just happen to be sponsored by the WEF (World Economic Forum) and such, who would like you to rather wear fake fabrics like polyester and other synthetics, manufactured in their corporate-owned factories and mills, and ‘eat ze bugs and be happy’, killing off all livestock owned by the masses because their farts supposedly cause climate change. They will of-course keep enough ‘Karoo lamb’, caviar, cream, cashmere and all the other natural fibres like alpaca, wool and silk, and karakul pelts for their own consumption, farmed by their own consortiums… Just as long as it’s not in the hands of the ‘common useless eaters’, or sheeple/goyim as they see the average human on earth, and yes, that includes you, dear reader! Even those of you who believe yourself to be among the ‘rich and famous’…
You’re not supposed to come to the logical conclusion that their own factories polluting the earth and raping its crust for their raw materials are in fact far more to be blamed. If you really want to see another example of such utter foolish reasoning, or just plain greedy market manipulation for ultimate profits, as well as the extent to which some people will go, please watch this video!
Alpacas, just like sheep and angora goats, MUST be shorn for their OWN WELFARE, because their fibre will just continue to grow and smother the animals in the heat during summer, eventually leading to their death! Imagine wearing a heavy pelt in the scorching heat of a mid-summer’s day! I promise you, you will do more harm to put them through that, than keeping them constrained for 10 minutes or so to get that fibre off! Take a look at this video to get an idea of what an animal looks like if not shorn for a few years. Your only other option, rather than shearing these fibre animals, is to just kill them all off and let them go extinct. And I don’t think it’s hard to come to the logical conclusion that it takes A VERY SPECIAL KIND OF STUPID to opt for the latter solution!
If ever you’ve seen the joyful abandon with which a just-shorn alpaca takes its first dust bath after those months of lugging around their luscious but oh-so-stiflingly hot coat, you too will understand!
Now, let’s focus on why we charge the price we do for our alpaca, based on our own local situation here in South Africa, and I will provide you with some figures that will hopefully put things in better context!
Number 1. SCARCITY!
Let’s start with the numbers.
There are roughly around 3,000 alpacas in South Africa, of which around 200 are Suris. There are 21.43 million sheep in South Africa. Now just for interest, let’s compare that to Australia, our nearest ‘competitor’.
There are around 350,000 alpacas in Australia, quite a lot down from the numbers when they officially decided to start ‘processing’ them for their meat about a decade ago. I remember the figure 800,000 but it is now impossible to confirm that number, it seems to have been removed. Yes, that certainly sets the ‘Alpacalyps’ in a new light… More on that in point 4 below.
Australia also has around 76.5 million heads of sheep in comparison. New Zealand have around 25.13 million sheep, and around 20,000 registered alpacas, 10% of which are Suri. Peru, their country of origin, has around 3 million alpacas, approximately 90% of the world’s alpaca population. Peruvian farmers are also the lowest paid alpaca farmers in the world! Yet those fleeces are mostly bought up by buyers in Italy, New York, Paris and London, where the fibre is then processed and converted to exquisite yet horrifically expensive designer clothing, and sold at exorbitant prices, making the ‘investors’ quite a pretty penny…! A case in point, the Duchess of York’s 7000-pound Suri coat made specially for her US-trip a few years back…!
Our local sheep represent a lot of wool, and sadly, here in SA at least, mills are mainly interested in top quality merino fibre, with specific staple lengths, so all the lovely down-breeds like Suffolk and Hampshire’s fleece end up being ‘discarded’ and even ploughed into the fields because there is no demand for them! Handspinners have not discovered them, or maybe it’s because we just don’t have enough handspinners yet! And the price breeders are paid, if they do sell it, is less than the cost to get it to the mills!
Merino, well, that’s another story, there is a lot of that, but getting your hands on good quality raw wool is also quite sketchy if you’re a handcrafter who would like to try your hand at raw-processing, and any crafter should try that at least once. The lanolin removal process is quite something, witnessing the almost magical transformation before your eyes.
Merino is usually sold to BKB, to then make it’s way to the mills to be processed into roving, top and yarn. We do stock all of those, but quite often I can only source super-wash merino, which I do not like to use if I can help it, because I don’t like the chemicals used in the process which basically strips the fibre from much of its natural goodness. It comes out completely denatured! It doesn’t felt anymore, because the scales have basically been scoured/melted away, it doesn’t even look like the natural wool anymore. And this is marketed as a plus point…?!? Well, at least it takes dyes beautifully – the reason mills want white fibre after all. So if that’s what you want it for, go for it.
I have since managed to get some raw merino, karakul, and karakul x merino and although it does pose a cleaning challenge, it’s a delight to work with. I will add some cleaned fibre to the store soon.
‘Farm wool’, that is wool from sheep crosses, are available and are usually very affordable, because normally farmers would dump it. They are just too happy if someone wants to take it off their hands, because they mainly shear there sheep for their wellfare’s sake, the wool is not part of their business plan, and prices range from ‘just take it’ to under R100.00 a kilo. Quality and the amount of kemp varies a lot too. I am sourcing lovely fleeces from the UK at excellent prices ranging from R300 to R1600 per fleece, depending on breed, the expensive ones being Wensleydale and Teeswater. BUT the transport to get it here, is double that… And then the customs fee is 50% of that entire import! I couldn’t believe it, but that’s what the latest one worked out to be – and I’m still waiting for it, as it was supposedly ‘inspected’, and because of that I need to now pay another R448.50 just because the state veterinary decided they need to inspect the washed fleeces…
Now you know another reason why I am writing this article… If you think you can get alpaca cheaper in the US or elsewhere, think again… By the time you get it through customs, it will be double the local price.
Because wool can often be picked up by the bags full if you know some farmers, at very low cost or even for free, and some people were also lucky enough to even get free alpaca fleeces from breeders who didn’t have a clue what to do with it, or what the true value of the fibre was, and they didn’t have anyone who could spin it, the misconception exists among people that it’s a cheap fribre, comparable to farm wool.
I do hope to help change that by awakening people’s interest in hand processing, spinning and weaving again, once again realising the value of those fibres too! Wool farmers also deserve getting more for their fibre, and an opportunity to supply a different market too – in this case the craft market! And that goes especially for different COLOURS too! Because stud breeders ruthlessly culled anything that wasn’t white, because that’s what their societies required them to do to remain ‘registered’, to the point of it being completely impossible to find a coloured merino, or even coloured Angora goat in South Africa! If farmers knew there’s a market for that coloured wool too, the sheep may be bred deliberately again, and whole coloured herds may again be established again, as they are currently doing in the US and UK, and Australia too.
For those who wonder about the ‘white’ issue, no, it’s got nothing to do with LGBT#@ whatever… It’s not a racial issue, it’s all about mills wanting only pure white because it’s cheaper to just do single processing runs, and because white can be dyed into any conceivable other colour. And that nearly meant the end of colour genetics for many fibre animals, most definitely angora and merino in SA!
Luckily, Australia, New Zealand, the UK and the US have not been so ignorant about genetics and have since woken up! Australia even has a black and coloured sheep association, assisting breeders in bringing these colours back from extinction, before it’s too late! The Black and Coloured Sheep Breeders Asociation of Australia (NSW) https://www.blacksheep.org.au/
The United States also have a Coloured Goat Breeders Association! https://cagba.org/
I hope to one day help start something similar here in South Africa, like a ‘Rarebreed Fibre Society’, covering all the various sheep breeds – people have no idea how many there are – and coloured Angora and other rare-breed goats, focusing on Suri too and even camel, to help re-establish and import these rare genetics again, NOT for the sake of ‘investors’, but for the sake of the animals! Not even a century ago, in my great-grandparents’ days, there used to be camels roaming around where I farm, there is even an area called Kameeldrift! Hopefully I can get in touch with like-minded people one day who would like to work towards this effort! For now, my focus is on breeding coloured alpaca, and hoping to one day import new Suri genetics too.
It is worth raising another issue here – you get two kinds of breeding societies – those who endeavour to protect their member’s ‘investment’ and for instance their associated mills’ profit margins, at the cost of the animals’ welfare, which means keeping things to ‘single-colour runs’ as much as possible, to keep costs as low as possible, and profits as high as they can (those societies are also the ones contributing to those funny-money-multi-million-rand bull/ram auctions, and since they can now flush and sell the egg-cells, cows and ewes too), and then there are those who are there to promote the welfare and actual breeding of the animals…
I believe the day will come when the short-sighted insistence of breed societies to cull all coloured genetics will be seen as a ridiculous and even criminal folly, like the banning of cotton and coloured fabrics in the video I shared above. The insistence that an animal must be disqualified as stud quality, and culled because it carries colour genetics is really a crime. I’m talking about perfectly normal animals that have existed and that have been bred for centuries… Until they no longer fit the mill’s requirements, then rules are implemented to wipe them out of existence…
Sadly, the monopoly where fibre is concerned in SA is firmly in place, with a single organisation and the hands holding its strings running the show, and most societies are forced to honour the first, and not the latter. Smaller societies just don’t get any chance to do what they started up to do, or have no intention to do so, as those running or funding the societies usually also has the biggest ‘investment’ to protect. It’s just one vicious circle… This setup has tentacles stretching all the way to government agencies and the like, and then we have those quotas…
Luckily, I do have to mention the South African Alpaca Society doesn’t impose any of that foolish colour-manipulation!
2. High Alpaca prices
Now, let’s look at arguably the biggest expense any alpaca breeder/keeper will have to face, the acquisition price of alpacas! It could have been placed as reason number one, but the price is high because of number one!
The imbalance between sheep and alpaca alone could already put the comparison between the price for sheep wool and that of alpaca to rest. After all, there are around 7100 sheep for every alpaca. But there are other even more important factors to consider too!
And that’s the price you must pay to get your alpaca herd started, before you can even harvest a gram of fibre.
The price of a sheep ewe is roughly R2,500.00. I focus on females here, because that’s where real breeders start, and I’m not even talking about ‘stud-quality’. You can buy pregnant start-up stock, and then get to the rams later, because a decent ram could sometimes (especially in these days of criminal price/market manipulation) present a stiff financial outlay. Breeders castrate their rams very young, so if you want an intact breeding quality ram, you must pay their price, usually at an auction where the price can be driven up even more, and it’s a case of take it or leave it…
And I am using averages here, there will be fluctuations towards both sides. The price of an alpaca female is roughly R25,000.00 – standard males are less, just like sheep and cattle, but still between R7,000.00 and R15,000.00, but proven stud quality males will again be different, even close to that, sometimes even more. The price of a Suri alpaca female is around R36,000.00… A quality proven Suri Herd Sire, that’s a breeding male, could also fetch this same price right now, and even more, and standard Suri males about half of that!
And this is real value, not those criminally faked prices where a bull or ram is supposedly auctioned off for a few million Rands, while in fact the whole bunch of people buying and selling and bidding are one big criminal gang getting together to cook up a price so they can all club together and share the spoils when selling thousands of straws of semen at a super pumped-up price, because unsuspecting people somehow believe that claptrap and think they get superb genetics at a ‘premium’ price, because some rich guy somehow had enough money and foresight to pay such a ridiculous price because the animal was somehow God’s gift to mankind, bearing superb, out of this world genetics … Sadly, some breeding societies (or their representatives) are often involved in this too, and the people involved are all members of said societies! Again, many of the people pulled into these shenanigans are not necessarily bad people themselves, but they are too weak to stand up agains criminals and say NO! Or they are scared they will lose their funding, or positions, or whatever other hold these satans have over them…
In many of these instances, NOT A SINGLE CENT was paid by ANYONE! It was all offset in shares and a cut of the spoils! Just another example of ‘investors’ ‘cooking up a storm’. May Karma kick them into the pigswill where they deserve to be gobbled up by the swine! The only money changing hands is that which is paid by unsuspecting semen-straw buyers (or egg-cells in the case of cows, ewes, and yes, this has started with alpaca genetics too, luckily still abroad), paid to those Mafia syndicates! And by the way, this is also one of the reasons imports of various animal breeds were blocked… So people will have to ‘improve’ their breeds this easily manipulated way. Fortunes are made out of Artificial Insemination!
It gets even worse when the end-buyers end up loading their stock prices because they were supposedly of superior-genetics, and they DID after all buy expensive genetic material! So, the effect of that crime circles out far and wide, because now people must pay super high prices for the resulting offspring, and the vicious circle continues! Go and do some digging into those scams and you will be utterly shocked by the outrageous criminality of it all!
This example represents one of the ways in which you do NOT determine a price! And that’s also why I am dead set against auctions and share markets, because no matter how you cut it, there are usually some degree of insider trading and manipulation at work!
When any common-sense business manager, and that certainly include farmers too, calculate their profit margins – and yes, any person with brains should do so otherwise their business won’t survive, not even if they just do it as a hobby, for the love of it – they have to consider their input expenses, like the price paid for their initial stock, the setup of their stabling, pastures, maintenance, staff wages and housing, medicines, veterinary expenses, shearing costs and shearing equipment, which are all quite pricey, and that biggest of all everyday expense, hay and other nutritional supplements. Believe me, those prices just keep on rising every day!
Farmers need to recover those expenses, plus they need to make a living themselves too, like paying their own overheads, buying and fixing their vehicles and other equipment, so they need to pay themselves a salary too. And that’s a tricky one, because they all – the decent people I know anyway – usually put themselves last in line!
I am not talking about that other altogether different class of swamp-creatures, called ‘investors’, because those entities in my opinion are classed as sub-human beings, they are operating entirely out of greed, steered by their medulla oblongata – the reptilian brain – and I have absolutely ZERO respect for those…
I talk about the ‘leeches’ who will do anything they can to protect their ‘investments’, including actually making sure everyone else’s fibre is sold off at a pittance, just to keep the animal prices as high as possible – because the fibre portion to them is really negligible, and they WANT it to appear ‘cheap’ when it comes to the price people are paid for their fibre, to anyone else who may dare to start up a farming business that would increase the alpaca numbers and thus bring down unit prices, as normal supply and demand would dictate…
Yes, this seems counter-intuitive, but you need to consider the complete picture!!! Learn to play chess and recognise the moves!
The central wool auction for instance is doing the bidding of those ‘investors’ pulling their strings behind the scenes, by making sure they pay a pittance for alpaca fibre to any farmer who dared to venture into alpaca farming for their fibre’s sake! And they make them wait for months on end to get paid too! Most alpaca farmers have given up on that idea by now, it’s just not profitable for them! Besides, they’ll go bankrupt at that pace! You need a healthy market for your product! And South Africa CERTAINLY do not have that, and I am NOT aware of anyone in a position to make a difference, wanting to change that anytime soon! And that’s a crime! Committed not only against the caring keepers and breeders of these animals, but against the actual animals too!
Few people seem to realise that if the average person cannot raise a return on their fibre, they cannot earn an income from their animals, then they won’t farm with these animals, it just doesn’t make commercial sense, especially if you’re not going to eat their meat either. AND DON’T get me wrong, I certainly am NOT proposing that! I sadly do know that day will come, but I for one won’t be going that way, that’s why I move heaven and earth to promote their fibre in stead!
So, the number of actual farmers will dwindle, the price for the animals will stay high, because only the wealthy will be able to breed these animals as status symbols and ‘investments’ – females are just WAY too expensive! So, the rich stay rich, keeping those prices high, only selling their animals to others who can afford those extreme prices, in many instances not in the least interested in making anything extra out of the fibre, which to them can be compared to manure harvesting, it’s just a by-product some people care to do something with, they would rather continue to make a fortune out of breeding their stud animals, thus protecting their ‘investment’!
The raw price for alpaca fibre paid by the mills is also deliberately kept low so the mills can cash in on that, then the processed alpaca is sold off at super premium prices! Used for high-end clothing, barely affordable by the masses!
Farmers in Peru and Chile are among the poorest of alpaca farmers, yet they provide the lion’s share of high-end fibre to the rest of the world. And only the rich can afford to wear alpaca! You have GOT to be super ignorant, or gullible, or blind, or all of that combined, not to be able to see this constitutes GROSS market manipulation!
Don’t you see just how devious this whole scheme really is!?! As long as the mill-paid fibre prices are kept ridiculously low, the animal prices will stay high, because there will not and cannot be any ‘normal demand’ to increase the actual animal numbers, and thus bringing the price of the livestock down.
Anyone really interested in the health and wellbeing, and increasing the numbers of these lovely animals, will realise the fibre prices and interest to keep these animals will have to be boosted, and yes, that will and HAVE to be accompanied by lowering the prices for these majestic animals! So instead of picketing for ‘stop the cruelty of shearing the animals’ rather start promoting paying a decent price for what their fibre is worth! In the long run that will again bring fibre prices down, but in a healthy and fair way.
And guess what, paying a decent, honest price for hand-processed alpaca will allow you to wear alpaca with pride, because it was spun, or at least woven and/or knit by your own hands, and it will STILL cost less than an expensive piece of boutique alpaca clothing, where you will have to pay for the ‘name’ of the brand too… So that’s the only way to really make it affordable in the long run!
The breeding of alpacas in South Africa has assisted in one very important thing, breeders have started to realise that if they want to continue to keep alpacas, they will have to process their alpaca fibre themselves as a cottage-industry, and that contributes to employment as well as the growth of the fibrecraft industry, my other passion, besides Alpacas.
That’s the only way we will be able to grow alpaca numbers in South Africa, rather than seeing them dwindling to extinction, because no new blood is imported to South Africa, because the current ‘investors’ would hate to see their investment ‘threatened’ by newcomers. Yes, imports of most animals into South Africa were halted quite a few years ago by the powers that be. Apparently, I was informed, as requested by the Societies, to protect the members ‘investments’ … I guess this is where Societies will have to show their true colours in the end, by showing their efforts to promote diversity in their breeds, and with that I include colour in the breed standards…
To save alpacas from just continuing to be a rarity and increase their numbers, AND to make them more affordable to everyday farmers, we need to pair them with the handcraft/fibrecraft industry, and that means getting down and dirty and doing it yourselves! And believe me, alpaca fibre can be very dirty! Watch this tongue-in-cheek video for a funny take on it…
We as alpaca farmers need to sort the fibre pricing out ourselves – the RIGHT WAY, not through manipulation and dumping excess built-up over many years because BKB offered peanuts and everyone thought they’re doomed, so their fibre continued to be stacked up in their stores, and eventually, rather than feeding it to the moths, they ended up dumping it on the market at a pittance, but by starting to use it and promoting it, and by setting a decent price right here in South Africa, one that’s fair to everyone! One where people consider their input to get to that fibre harvest, and to get a fair income from it. Not to ‘get rich quick’, but also not to act like hard-up beggars!
And breeders should start working together, by focusing on generating a healthy supply and demand of this magical fibre! And to help raise interest in fibrecrafts! That’s exactly what I am trying to do!
It’s also important to note that you can’t look at Etsy, or the US or UK or Australia to compare prices! Just look at how many animals they have there, their fibre supply is astronomically higher compared to the local supply, and their animal prices have also come down a lot! Sadly, there is also a lot of dumping by the bags full, because people don’t get good prices for their fibre, and they too are faced with hard times, looking for a quick buck to get food on the table… And in the end, that hurts everyone! Because the pendulum swings, and before they know it, they are left with none! They are pretty much in the same boat, having to dump their fibre to be able to make ends meet, as mills are dropping them like flies! The CV-issue certainly also contributed to that problem!
Yes, I know there are breeders who managed to build up a nice niche market, who are getting nervous right now and who would rather not have any competition. They even like the idea of picking up bags full of fibre at a low price, and one can’t blame them. But some are worried their business will somehow be affected and they will lose out on profits.
Instead, they need to decide where they fit in, among the ‘investor-type-swamp-creatures’ who would prefer that none of the ‘working class’ ever discover their secret ‘investment instruments’, or the alpaca breeders who love their animals and who want to see the cottage-style handcraft businesses, where the middle-men are pushed aside, flourish, and people of all walks of life be given an opportunity to enjoy this wonderful fibre!
In general, I have a lot of trust in humanity, but they need to wake up from their gullible state and see what’s going on around them, so they can truly CHOOSE! I am pretty sure most of them will realise healthy competition has NEVER hurt anyone, and it certainly won’t hurt the alpacas! And if they offer a good product, with the small number of alpacas in the country, once any stored-up fibre stocks are processed and sold, the time between one shearing season and the next will quite probably leave them wanting more fibre!
There is after all not enough alpaca fibre to go around in a healthy market! It’s NOT that there’s not enough of a market! The world market was just monopolized, promoted elsewhere, by only supplying large international mills for processing luxury goods, and neglected on locally – the local handcraft market where normal people can access those luxury fibres at sustainable prices!!! People just did not realise it is truly up to themselves! Yes, it’s true, we do not have enough mills in South Africa, but we do have enough magic ‘w’hands! Let’s start using them! And enjoy it too!
If the balance is restored, people will want to buy more animals, or buying more fibre from other breeders, but at a fair price! And the alpaca industry will start to flourish, not the ‘investor-scene’! I don’t give a damn for those ‘investor-types’, they are the reason the world is going down the drain! Because small businesses are forced to close their doors one after the other, to be taken over by corporations run by greedy ‘investors’…
Anyway, by now anyone should have realised there is a HUGE difference between alpaca and wool already, and even between Huacaya alpaca (the fluffy teddy bear-like ones) and Suri alpaca (the ‘Rastas’ with their shiny flowing locks)! Our logo is a perfect example – huacaya cria on the left, and a Suri cria on the right. Cria just means it’s a baby, like a lamb when you refer to a baby sheep.
3. Number of offspring per year
Now, speaking of lambs – here’s another very important point – a sheep can have multiple lambs per birth, from 1 to 3 and even more, and their gestation period is only about 5 months (152 days). So technically, they can have 3 batches of lambs in let’s say 2 years. So, let’s make that an average of 4 lambs per year.
Alpaca gestation on the other hand, is 345 days! It even exceeds a human pregnancy! More than double that of a sheep! And they always only have a single cria. Multiple births are EXTREMELY rare, and the cria usually do not make it! So that usually ends in a complete loss for the breeder, or if they are lucky, one may survive! Moreover, they quite often ‘absorb’ their pregnancies by day 45, and that could be for many reasons, illness, low quality hay, the weather, shock, dewormers, handling, pregnancy scanning, etc…
So, then they need to be bred again, and the 1-year count-down starts anew… That’s if the breeder realised this soon enough, otherwise they will only discover this many moons later!
Pregnancy scans can be done, but that can also negatively affect the foetus, and up here in Gauteng, where we farm, we have unscrupulous vets who believe an alpaca must be treated like a pedigree horse because they are ‘expensive investments’, like a horse, and therefore they also want to cash in on your ‘investment’ and charge you almost R500.00 for ONE scan! Imagine scanning 70-plus females! Even though that particular vet was involved in doing scans down in the Cape at just R45.00 an alpaca at one time, she didn’t realise I knew where she learned to scan alpacas.
Ridiculous! I gave up on that idea soon after I received the quote, and reverted to spit-offs again, because thankfully, a pregnant female almost always has a ‘headache’ when an amorous male should dare to approach her in her ‘sensitive condition’…
4. Dual versus single-purpose animals
Then there is that other very important point to consider! Sheep are dual-purpose animals! So, farmers make the lion’s share of their money from selling meat and skins, after already making money on the breeding and fibre too – remember those 4 lambs per ewe per year average? The fibre remains a small, almost negligible portion of their income.
These days, many are in fact mainly raised purely for their meat, and the fibre is not even utilised at all, or considered a sideline. Thankfully, alpacas are NOT processed as a meat source in South Africa yet, although they are processed as a meat source in Australia, Chile, Peru and elsewhere.
I know that would supposedly make them a more viable livestock for farming, but I prefer to focus on promoting their fibre! Not the least because when people focus on the meat, they will neglect the fibre quality, as it happened in the meat sheep industry! And that would be a disgrace!
5. Alpaca is a superior fibre, in so many ways!
This is probably the one point that in my opinion, places alpaca firmly on a pedestal, if not a throne, certainly more than enough already to secure a decent price! Pure indulgence! Alpaca fibre, both Suri and Huacaya, is flame resistant, moisture wicking, water resistant, lanolin free, hypoallergenic, and has natural thermal insulating properties, it is silky soft, comparable to cashmere, it is light as a feather, yet warmer than wool, superior in all its qualities. It does not retain water and effectively resists solar radiation. It has a thermal insulating effect making it warm and comfortable while still being lightweight, almost ethereal, so it won’t weigh you down.
An alpaca wrap is probably the closest you’ll get to a heavenly hug! That’s probably also why its such a firm favourite for baby’s blankets, vests, leggings and jackets! No wonder the Incas called it “The Fibre of the Gods”.
You have to handle it, spin it and wear it yourself to understand!
6. The actual expenses linked to raising alpacas, and processing their fibre
So, now we come to the nitty-gritty part – how should you determine your prices?
Take your initial outlay on purchasing your herd for starters. Many small herds consist of 2 or three herd guards/fibre boys, which are standard excess males sold off by breeders because they were not breeding quality, or too closely related to the rest of the female herd, or for whatever reason.
These hobby farmers may only have a hand-full of fleeces per year, a fleece weighing anything from 2 to 4 kilos for adult fleeces, the really soft cria fleeces seldom reach more than a kilo, but even those owners paid at least R6000.00 per animal. You can decide for yourself how much of that price you will want to reflect in your fibre-price, if any. It could just be your hobby, or you make the bulk of your money from them in a petting zoo selling baggies of food for kids to feed to your alpacas, or you may be selling their ‘pellets’ to gardeners for a great source of compost, and you don’t see a need to include the initial outlay, but the sensible thing would be to include at least a small part.
For the rest of the list, I am more focussed on owners of larger groups of alpacas. Consider salaries per month, your wages paid to your staff, if any, and the salary you as a farmer are entitled to yourself. As a farmer, not as a CEO of a Fortune-500 company that is…! Don’t be ridiculous, just be fair.
If you’re a really big farmer with many alpacas, include things like a pro-rata portion of the rent or bond payments of your piece of land, stabling, building costs to erect their fences, fencing itself, establishing and irrigating pastures, fuel to pump water, transport costs for sourcing their hay and supplements, or electricity and water consumption – the latter also reflects quite high in fibre processing if you’re going to wash those fibres, just by the way!
If you actively sell your alpaca cria or even adult animals, that income of course need to be deducted from your expenses, so you need to make less on your fibre to break even.
Everyone will have their own specific set of expenses. And again, don’t be silly, non-recuring costs will be deductible over a few years, like fencing, and rent will depend on the number of alpacas you have and how much space they use, so you can’t say you want to recover your entire monthly rent because you have 2 alpacas…
Next, total your direct expenses for the year towards their health, like veterinary expenses, medicines, hay, pellets, shearing costs and such.
You may have noticed by now that you will never be able to get back all your input costs, unless you sell animals too, so I deduct a certain part from all this – I accept I will not recover everything I put in, so I already slash all of that quite a bit. I call it my ‘therapy benefit’ because I get so much more from them, there is happiness, peace and the pleasure to be with them and being able to work with their fibre. That’s my balancing entry!
7. Processing their fibre into quality end-products
Finally, look at how many kilos you have available in fibre, and work out what a fair price will be per kilo, then convert it to smaller batches if you were to sell your fibre per 50g or 100g – it must still be a bite-sized and affordable package to those buying it. It’s as simple as expenses = income. Balanced! And beware – just selling it off quickly by the kilo for any arbitrary price to help you meet THIS month’s budget may sound like a quick solution, but then you have nothing left to manage your alpaca business till next shearing season – and you have people expecting to always get your fibre at a give-away price…!
Again, just remember, you may have a storeroom full of fibre right now. The logical response may seem to sell it out at a very low price and get a nice wad of money in quickly, solving your financial woes for this month, but then it’s over for the rest of the year. AND you have set a dangerous precedent! People will expect you to sell it at that price in future! And then your formulas will no longer work out and you will be running at a huge loss, eventually maybe even being forced to sell all your animals.
And what’s more, you have stabbed a bleeding wound into the alpaca market too, for the same reason, because people will take that as the ‘going price for alpaca fibre’… So, look towards the future too! Don’t be like those ‘investors’ who, in their greed, do everything to kill off the goose that lays the golden eggs, only to wake up when it’s too late.
It’s all about BALANCE!
Next, if you plan on processing it further, you’ll need prices for your processed items too, be it beautiful bats, or luscious-coloured locks, yummy art yarns or wonderful woven throws or pillows, you need to consider the equipment and cleaning stuffs you’re going to need to wash it, card it, comb it, a drum carder, hackle, dye pots and dyes if you’re going to be dyeing, a spinning wheel and looms if you’re going to spin or weave too, and no, you’re not going to add the price of a Majacraft Aura spinning wheel and a Fusion Engine to your three or five or even 7 alpaca’s fibre and offset it in one year, but you could divide that over let’s say five years and include a portion of that, and it would be fair. But if you’re going to spin all kinds of other fibres too, which seems obvious and logical, you really need to HONESTLY decide how much alpaca and how much other fibres you would be spinning on that wheel, or card on that drum carder. Then you add maybe a quarter or so to your portion to be added as expenses and allocate the rest to the other projects.
And then there is the actual time spent on this processing!
Again, be honest with yourself, because Karma’s a bitch, you WILL get slapped silly if you’re greedy! I’m a firm believer in ultimate honesty, and it starts with yourself! How can you live with yourself if you can’t even be honest with yourself! Have some pride in your own integrity! Establish a fair hourly rate per project and stick to that! You shouldn’t do this ‘to get rich quickly’, this is something you do to be happy and content!
Happy and content means you wake up in the morning without worrying about keeping up with the Jones’s, about having to rush off to work to make enough money to keep the wolf from the door. Read my previous blog post on spinning to understand just what I mean with that… It’s a whole metaphysical, spiritual science in itself…
Before you know it, you will be able to get to an honest minimum price! I am charging less than the price per kilogram I need to earn with my own herd, and I have quite a few animals! I don’t sell animals, so my only income is from fibre. I settled on a bit less for the raw fibre, and I can add to that by processing it further, which granted will add more expenses, but I’m happy to balance it out! My minimum amount I should get to per kilo for RAW huacaya fibre is R3000.00 p/kg! It was already severely slashed to remove my ‘therapy benefit’, so R150 per 50g package, and that’s for the raw fibre, no processing at all! I settled on R120.00 for huacaya for now, early 2024. Suri is obviously more expensive. Heaven knows what the future will bring with all the share market and interest rate manipulations that keep on pushing the price of everything that affects us as breeders, including feed, fuel and staff wages, skyward!
I have not added fibre equipment expenses to my fibre prices, and certainly not Majacraft prices, and actual labour time added to processed fibre is expressed in near-minimum rate, with me personally doing most of the work myself – because I like doing it. So yes, there is that, you can consider the work you put into processing your fibres, as treatment too, therapy to keep you happy doing something you enjoy, like people paying to go and do a workout at the gym! And all along, I am still below that minimum rate!
So, rest assured, the price I am charging is a fair price! I am sure those breeders who will now take the time to work out their own prices, will agree, and charge their own fair prices. I would love to hear from anyone else what fair price they end up with!