With camelids, it’s all about the fiber.

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A strong demand for exotic animal fiber has created a market for everything from yak to buffalo to musk ox hair. Highly valued in spinning and weaving circles, llama and alpaca fiber has become a hot commodity, and garments made from the stuff are reaching more and more markets worldwide. High-quality llama fiber sells for about $3.25 per ounce, and the best alpaca fiber is available for about $4 an ounce. Guanaco and vicuña are very difficult to domesticate (they jump fences), and each vicuña produces only about a pound of the good stuff every couple of years, so their fiber is expensive. Guanaco fiber sells for around $30 an ounce, vicuña for about $225 an ounce.

One way that spinnable material is measured is by the width of each fiber, in microns (1,000th of an inch). The vicuña and alpaca top the charts for fineness.

AnimalFiber Diameter
Vicuña6-10 microns
Alpaca (Suri)10-15 microns
Musk Ox (Qiviut)11-13 microns
Angora Rabbit13 microns
Cashmere (goat)15-19 microns
Yak Down15-19 microns
Guanaco16-18 microns
Merino (sheep)12-20 microns
Chinchilla21 microns
Mohair (goat)25-45 microns
Alpaca (Huacaya)27.7 microns
Llama (Tapada)20-30 microns
Llama (Ccara)30-40 microns

Source: International Llama Association

  • Published on Jan 1, 2008
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