05/08/2026
Great advice and we do the same although not many crias in rescue - but some! 😉
This is why you want to shear newborn alpacas a few weeks after they're born. It's called Cria Tipping. The reason this is important is because the fluids from birth remain in the fiber, which then becomes a magnet for debris. The build up of debris is often so severe that the entire fleece needs to be thrown away.
To avoid this, the cria is shorn, or "tipped", meaning the tips of the new cria fleece are shorn off to remove the fluid encrusted fiber a few weeks after its birth. This greatly improves the quality of the resulting fleece that will be shorn a year later.
An alpaca's first fleece is almost always its finest and most valuable. Not cria tipping means most likely taking a total loss on the most valuable part of your alpaca fiber harvest.
