Alpaca Carding Service

Hello to all.....

At  Humminghills we offer an alpaca fleece carding service on our Platts Worsted Carding Machine (right), which gives an end product of aligned fibres in a lovely soft roving which is wonderful to spin and felt with.

Contact Sue or Dennis to discuss your carding needs on:
(07) 5590 7745   Den: 0407 458 107 Sue: 0439685969

or email us on: alpaca@humminghillsalpacas.com.au

Online orders can be placed here, but please do read the information below first. It is in your own interest to prepare your fleeces to be carded as costing for carding is based on inward fleece weight.

Prior to sending your fleece:
Some wonderful effects can be achieved by blending colours, so get those fleeces out of the attic and let's make them spinnable....!

Prepared, skirted alpaca fleece may be posted or delivered to:

Humminghills Alpacas
216 Carool Road
BILAMBIL NSW 2486

It is in your own interest to prepare your fleeces to be carded as costing for carding is based on inward fleece weight.
Industry standards recommend a carding loss of 5%-25% is to be expected, so good preparation achieves the lower % of loss.

Our cost for carding Huacaya is $28.00/kg plus GST.

Extras -
Fleeces arriving unskirted (short cuts from shearing, guard hair, vegetable matter), we  charge $10.00/kg.  We are happy to do this for you as it's a dusty job that takes time and skill.

To avoid this charge, get the fleeces out of the bag from the shearer, and spread them out on a skirting table, ( a veranda or any flat surface will do). Remove the coarse guardy fibre from around the edges of the fleece first, (areas of the belly, brisket and groins are usually heavily guardy and this, left in, makes the end product prickly).

Now give the fleece a good shake, lifting and shaking and you'll find all the short cuts will start falling away from the good fleece and a lot of the dust too.

Next the fleece needs to be pulled apart even more, so by pulling through your other hand, small amounts at a time, tease it apart removing as much vegetable matter as you can, as you go.

This whole process takes up to an hour to prepare. When you're happy with what you've skirted rebag the prepared fleece and send off for carding.

At our discretion, very poorly presented fleeces with high bur contamination will be returned at your cost, if unable to be successfully carded.

Blending of colours:
Depending on how the fleece is fed into the feed tray you can achieve a  streaky roving of 2 to 3 colours, or an evenly blended roving, ie: black & white = grey. We will do blending for $10.00/kg.

Fleeces can be washed  for you prior to carding for $10.00/kg. This service is particularly desirable for people who are sensitive to the dust in natural alpaca fleece. To the final rinse I add a wool conditioner with a few drops of added eucalyptus oil.

Our fleeces from the farm are particularly clean as we are very lucky to have grass covered paddocks throughout the year, so we usually wash at the skein stage. 

As we have many different coloured alpacas ourselves we  have for sale bags of carded fleece suitable for spinning :
$8 to $10 per 100g for super fine & ultra fine, and
$4 to $7 per 100g for fine spinning, felting / craft suitability.

We are both active spinners, so hand spun yarn of many natural colours and hand dyed colours are usually available or can be ordered. Available for $12.50 to $20.00 per 50g ball. It takes about 60 hours approximately to hand spin a kilo of fleece more for finer plys.

Postage through Australia Post is surprisingly inexpensive as fleece is large in size yet light in weight.

Best to pop your fleeces into a strong bag, or better still, a feed sack, tie securely, making sure all your return details and requirements are inside before sending.

To fellow alpaca breeders in our region, we are more than happy to pick up fleece at participating shows or meetings.

Please feel free to call with any enquiries.

We look forward to assisting you with your carding needs and hope you will support us with your custom.

Happy Spinning, Weaving and Felting!