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Dave Davies

A Simpler Time Alpacas & Mill

In’s & Out’s Of A Professional Mill - Processing Fiber

ACD-DDBK7

Dave Davies – A Simpler Time Alpacas & Mill

Copyright 2008, All Rights ReservedAlpacasNextDoor.com, LLC

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In’s & Out’s Of A Professional MillProcessing Fiber

Dave DaviesA Simpler Time Alpacas & Mill

Near San Diego, California(619)-579-9114

www.ASimplerTimeMill.com

Dave and his family (wife, Barbara and nine children) operate their alpacabusiness in the hills of El Cajon about 30 minutes from beautiful San Diego,CA. They decided to get into the business in 2000 after visiting an alpacaranch while on vacation. Dave’s experience in manufacturing and Barbara’sin marketing seemed to create the perfect coupling for a successful start.After agisting for a few years, they not only brought the alpacas home theystarted a processing mill for their alpaca fleece.

Dave quickly became extremely knowledgeable in all phases of processingthe fleece and so they opened up their mill to other local ranches in 2003.(The fleece from Alpacas of Anza Valley has been carefully and skillfullyturned into gorgeous skeins of yarn, batts and rovings for the local handspinners.) Now they are known as a premier alpaca spinning mill fornumerous ranches all over the country and four of their children help out.

At the time of this interview, they currently own 35 huacayas. The famousoutstanding dark silver grey herdsire named Calypso Cloud also residesthere. The Davies family developed a philosophy of creating long-term, one-on-one relationships with their (human) clients, because they view theplacement of their alpacas as more than just a business transaction -- it isliterally an adoption. Their bottom line; “WE WANT YOU TO SUCCEED andwill do everything possible to ensure that you and your animals thrive”,makes them very approachable for any questions, advice and assistance.



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Julie Roy: Good Morning, Dave.

Dave Davies: Good Morning, Julie.

Julie Roy: Hey, isn’t this great that we can have an interview and just chatabout the wonderful things that you are doing with alpaca fiber these days.

Dave Davies: Oh, we love to talk about alpaca fiber.

Julie Roy: When I was talking to you earlier, you were giving me a veryinteresting story about how you got started and I’m sure our listeners wouldenjoy hearing it too, because so many of them start their alpaca businesswithout having any other livestock experience or, not even knowing they aregoing to get in to it. Why don’t you tell our listeners exactly why you gotinto alpaca’s?

Dave Davies: Oh, it was a fun trip! We decided one time to head out toPagosa Springs in Colorado, we had a time share there and we went out tothe time share and on the first day of the timeshare, they had anopportunity for us to go to the meeting and sit down and listen to ALL theopportunities we could spend that week doing. There were several differentevents, but one that stuck out in our mind, there was a gentleman there,who had offered for anybody who was interested, to come to his alpacaranch and find out about alpacas. Well, we had no idea what an alpaca was.We’d never seen one. We didn’t know anything, but what he did do, was hehanded us a teddy bear.

Julie Roy: Oohhh.

Dave Davies: And when I touched that teddy bear, Oh my! We needed toknow what kind of an animal could produce such a soft, wonderful product.We were hooked.

Julie Roy: What a great idea for him to do. Yes, so you’re holding a teddybear in your hand and still not having no idea of what animal produced it.

Dave Davies: Back then, we had no idea what to call it. We didn’t knowthat we would normally call it alpaca fiber. At that point, we just said, whatis this and it just made us very curious. So we headed out to his ranch and



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we spent the day there and we were shocked. We had never seen such aninteresting, fun, absolutely enjoyable animal. They are so cute and soadorable, that we were hooked. We just couldn’t believe it. We were hookedso much so, that we went there everyday for the entire week.

Julie Roy: Oh my goodness and what year was this?

Dave Davies: That was the year 2000.

Julie Roy: Oh, right. You know, listeners, there’s an idea you could takeright away. Hook yourself up with people visiting your area that maybewant something to do that’s out of the ordinary. What a great idea.

Dave Davies: It was for us and boy did it bring us in and all it took wasone alpaca teddy bear.

Julie Roy: My goodness, well then where did it go from there Dave?

Dave Davies: Well, what we decided to do at the end of the week, webought some alpacas. So we purchase four alpacas and we did not haveanything set up for animals, because that was just not where we wereheaded in the moment in life, but we said that we’d love to have them. Sowhat they did is they made arrangements for us that we were able to hangonto those alpacas, at his ranch for one year. So we spent a year getting ourranch ready to bring those alpacas home.

Julie Roy: So, what was it, a package, or four as individual ones? Whatdid you buy?

Dave Davies: We did buy a package deal, we bought two females and thatcame with one male, who was stud quality ready and then one juniorherdsire.

Julie Roy: All right and the females were pregnant, so they were going tobe delivering soon.

Dave Davies: Yes, they were. That’s what got us started. Matter of fact,I believe the first couple of animals were actually born at his ranch before



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we even got them back to ours. So we had crias before we even had achance to see them, they were born at his place.

Julie Roy: How interesting, but before we get too far along, I know thatyou also have an interesting background. You didn’t know anything aboutlivestock. You worked in the manufacturing field. So, tell us how all thatcame about.

Dave Davies: Well, we got to know Dave Belt, he’s the editor for theAlpaca Magazine. That was the gentleman’s ranch that we went and visitedand after quite a bit of conversation with him, we found there was quite a bitof interest in the actual alpaca fiber and people using the fiber for all kindsof really wonderful products and turning the actual alpaca fiber into yarn.With my manufacturing background, that just intrigued me. It thought thatwould be a wonderful thing to get involved in and so we started makingsome inquiries and taking a look at how many mills are actually in the UnitedStates and found that there weren’t a lot of alpaca mills that were actuallyprocessing the fiber. So that got us pretty excited and pretty interested, sofrom there we decided let’s get a mill going and we did.

Julie Roy: So let’s go back for just a moment Dave, you said that therereally aren’t very many mills to process alpaca fiber in the United States.Well, what went into starting a mill?

Dave Davies: Well, right from the beginning, we decided that we wantedthe best training we could get. So we didn’t want to just go out and buysome equipment and try to figure out how to do this process. So weactually went to some Mini-Mills, which is an organization in Canada, whoproduced the actual equipment. We bought the equipment directly fromthem and a part of the equipment purchase was training. So they camedown and trained my entire family on the entire process of making alpacayarn.

Julie Roy: Okay and I know you have a fairly large family, so you decidedright from the beginning that this was going to be a family business, is thatright?

Dave Davies: Absolutely.



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Julie Roy: Oh, that’s wonderful. Okay, so you got the training from thecompany in Canada and they sold you the equipment and now what yearwas this?

Dave Davies: That was the beginning of 2003.

Julie Roy: And so you had a small herd at that time, also?

Dave Davies: Yes, we did. We had approximately eleven animals at thatpoint.

Julie Roy: Okay, so you started your mill in the early 2003 and what wasthat first year like?

Dave Davies: Well, the first year was pretty challenging. We got to learnand process on our own fiber before we started to do anyone else’s. Then,of course, in 2003 we had the fire that occurred in San Diego, which madean additional challenge for us because it did burn our home down at thattime. Fortunately, our business was still in tact and all of our equipmentwas still in place, but our home did get burned.

Julie Roy: Yes, yes I know that. I was in a similar area and alsoexperienced the evacuation. I also know that your animals were evacuatedsafely and that nothing happened to them.

Dave Davies: That’s right.

Julie Roy: So would you say that set you back just a little bit then or…

Dave Davies: Yeah, that set us months back. It was quite a challenge toget things going. We were very fortunate in that none of the equipment wasdamaged at all. There wasn’t even any smoke damage to any of our fiberthat was here, so that was great.

Julie Roy: Yeah, that was wonderful.

Dave Davies: A third of the community’s homes did burn down. So it’sbeen quite a challenge for not just us, but everyone else that lives in thisarea.



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Julie Roy: Yeah, that’s very true, San Diego experienced just a horrificwild fire situation and we are so glad that your home is being rebuilt andyour mill has still been able to be in operation and your animals are safe.

Dave Davies: Yep, it’s been working really well.

Julie Roy: Now Dave, I chose you for this interview because I’ve alreadyexperienced the quality of yarn that you’ve produced and there’s a lot thatgoes into making that quality yarn. But before we go into the technicalprocess, I thought it would probably be interesting for our listeners to hearyour perspective on what they could do that might prepare the alpaca fiber alittle bit better before they even are shorn. Can you give us yourperspective on that?

Dave Davies: Sure, I’d be glad to. One of the things they can do is take alook very carefully around their own ranch and take a look at the conditionsof their alpaca pens. One of the things about the fiber processing is that youwant to get as much back as you possible can and what really makes alpacafiber loss is vegetation. If animals, which they love to do, because they loveto roll, and boy do they have fun rolling, but when they’re rolling around, ifthey’re rolling around in hay and burrs and all kinds of different vegetationlike that, it came really cause their fiber to matte up and get really, reallydifficult to work with. When the machines start to process that kind of thing,you will actually lose more fiber. So that’s one of the things that they canstart with is taking a look at what’s the conditions of my alpaca pens. Ifthey do that anywhere from two to four weeks before they’re going to shear.Make sure that they are cleaned up everyday. Make sure there’s no haylying on the ground for the alpacas to roll in and just really look at thecondition of the kinds of plants that are nearby. Some of the plants, if youdon’t notice, have really long spurs or spirals, burrs on them and if that getsinto the fiber, that really can cause the fiber to get matted up and make itdifficult for it to be processed.

Julie Roy: That’s very good advice, so the listeners can just start beingaware of the conditions that the alpacas are living in and if possible, makethat shift or change. So just two weeks before shearing would make a bigdifference in the final processing?



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Dave Davies: Absolutely, at least two weeks, I always like to go back fouror six weeks and start looking definitely at the plants and the animals. Theplants that are in with the animals, but if you want to make sure, go at leasttwo weeks ahead of time and make sure there isn’t any on the ground at allin that last two weeks.

Julie Roy: Oh, that’s great. Then when the animal is actually shorn, anyadvice about that?

Dave Davies: Well, depending on whom you’re working with when you’reshearing. Some of the shearer guys like it to be vacuumed. You canactually vacuum the fiber and that will help pull some of the dirt andvegetation out right before you shear the animals. Other guys, who we’reworking with, have no difficulty, they are happy to have you blow theanimals. There’s actual blowers that you can get, that will allow it to blow alot of the dust and the dirt and also some of the vegetation out of the fiber.So that’s another process that you can do right before you go to shear.

Julie Roy: That’s good advice. Actually, I use that process myself. I havea couple of show boys and I take them to a shearer and we use a shearingtable and he has a very strong vacuum and we’re able to get a lot of thedirt, because it is impossible to keep them from rolling, like you said. Thenwhen that fiber is submitted to the show, it makes my skirting a lot easier,too.

Dave Davies: Absolutely. You know, we actually happen to use theblowing method, but both methods have been known to be used quiteaffectively.

Julie Roy: Okay, we’re working with a shearer and we’ve shorn theanimal. What do we do with the fleece, now that it’s off the animal?

Dave Davies: Well, you definitely want to bag it up. My suggestion onthat is use clear plastic bags, because when you’re using the clear plasticbag, you can actually just eyeball very quickly what kind of color you’reusing and what animal does it come from. Make sure that you mark yourbags. You can use the sharpie pens, the black ones and mark it with yourranch name and also that animal’s name. Then you’d want to mark on it ifits blanket, neck or leg and sometimes depending on the animal, some of



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the animal’s neck is just as good quality as their blanket and you couldactually combine those two. Most of the time the leg is not as quite as fineand if you do decide to put it in with the blanket, it just means that the yarnwon’t come out quite as soft as it could have.

Julie Roy: Okay, good advice there too. So we’ve got the fiber all baggedup, it’s in the clear bag. Should there be an opening at the top to let any airin or let it breathe or should it be sealed tightly?

Dave Davies: Well, if you’re going to close it up, which you can do, youjust want to make sure that you don’t close it up so tight that you have areally hard time opening up. Knotting it down, makes it much more difficultto get back into it and see when you want to go ship it off or send itsomewhere and you’ll be able to see how soft or how much of that fiber youwant to use. You want to be able to get back into it. So sometimes, youcan use a twist tie. What I like to do is I just actually like to twist it close.Take the bag and just spin it several times and then fold it over on itself andthat will work quite well. But one thing that you definitely want to do forstorage is don’t keep it in the sun. If you leave the fiber in the sun what’llhappen is it will get moisture buildup inside the bag and then once thathappens, you’ll get moisture inside it and on the fiber and that can cause thefiber to rot.

Julie Roy: Oh, that’s interesting. So if you store it, then you’re saying acool dry spot is probably better?

Dave Davies: Absolutely, if you get it out in the sun, that’s what’s going tocause it to do that. So you want to keep it in a cool dry place.

Julie Roy: Okay, so Dave, what could people do with the fiber from say anolder female, whose gotten a little bit more course then she was in her earlydays?

Dave Davies: {chuckles} Oh, there’s so many things that you can still dowith it, it’s just great. One of the things that we like to do is we like to handfelt and what you can do with that kind of fiber is you can turn it into what iscalled a batt, we’ll run it on the machine and we’ll turn it into a batt. Onceyou have it into a batt, you can lay it out and you can actually start workingin hand felting. And we’ve done so many different creative things, we’ve



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actually we’ve made slippers and hand felted it directly right on your feetwhich was kind of a fun thing to do and then we’ve also made purses.We’ve made hats and there’s just a variety, not only can you do that, we’veeven used the fiber for stuffing for quilts because it is so warm. It keepsyou warm and you just put that batt right inside of the quilt and it will justkeep you really warm.

Julie Roy: That’s true and I do enjoy my quilt made with my alpacabatting. So what you’re saying is that every animal could contribute theirfiber to some use and every part of the fiber could be used as well.

Dave Davies: Absolutely and if you process it as an example, through ourmill, what we can do for people is we take the fiber that’s the blanket andwe’ll run it through and turn that into yarn in no different cost or charge,we’ll take the neck and leg fiber, run that right through and turn that into abatt for them without any difference in cost.

Julie Roy: Oh that’s wonderful, so they can use all parts of the animal, aslong as they designate to you, before you start process it, what they wantdone with what part.

Dave Davies: Absolutely, you just designate it ahead of time and we’ll runit in that direction.

Julie Roy: So Dave, let’s talk about some of the basic things that theycould expect if they took their yarn to you for processing. Could you walkthrough the steps with us?

Dave Davies: Oh to turn it into different products, absolutely. We canuse raw fiber directly from the bag and one of the things that we start withwhich is kind of unique in our process, is we have a blower, a tumblerblower. We’ll drop it into that and it has an actually tumbling method, verysimilar to the kind of thing where you put the balls in and draw it out for thelotto cage. What we do is, it has a blower down below and it will starttumbling the fiber, which causes both the dirt and some of the vegetation todrop out and start getting it clean. From there, well put it into a specializedwashing machine, made actually for washing alpaca fiber and then we’ll putit into drying racks and so that we’ll have the fiber absolutely dry before westart. Then the very first step into the process for turning it into yarn would



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be in the picker. What its going to do is, you know how when you get up inthe morning and your hair is just matted down and you’re trying to pullingyour comb through your hair.

Julie Roy: {laughter} Yes, sure.

Dave Davies: Well, that’s what happens to alpacas too, their hair mattesdown and so that’s what the pickers for. What’ll do is, it actually runs itthrough into a room, we blow it through this machine and it opens it up. It’slike combing it really quickly and it opens up the fiber and it makes it reallylight. We tend to call that the “cloud.”

Julie Roy: Ohh, okay.

Dave Davies: From there, our next step in the process, through our mill,is we actually put it in the fiber separator and de-hairer. Now there aremany mills that do not do this process, we actually do this and what it doesis it removes both the vegetation and the hair and the course hair will dropto the bottom and the fine hair goes out to the back of the machine and weuse the finer hair to continue on, that fiber will move on through the processand the course will fall out. Now depending how much guard hair youranimal actually has, can depend on how much loss you’ll have at that point.Once we have it cleaned up, then we’ll put it into what’s called the Carder.And the Carder, what it’s going to do is, align the fiber, then we’ll measurethe alpaca fiber out. When we measure it out we’ll put it into the machine ata steady constant rate and that machine, the Carder, actually pulls the fiber,it aligns it, putting all the fibers in the same direction. It lines it up and pullsit out the back and it comes all and gathers it into one continuous, and itlooks very similar to a rope coming out the other end and yet, its just alpacafiber being strung together. Now hand spinners tend to really like to spinfrom that, because it makes it real simple for them to be able to put it on ahand spinning machine and actually spin it up for themselves in a nice wayto do hand spinning.

Julie Roy: There is a special name for that, isn’t there?

Dave Davies: Well, it’s called roving and depending on which mill you use,some of them will call it slivers. We call it slivers once we put it through thedrawframe, which is the very next step. What a drawframe will do is we put



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three of the roving’s up together and we pull it through the drawframe and itcombines and stretches it out into one and we call that the sliver.

Julie Roy: Okay.

Dave Davies: With that being a sliver, what that does is its getting rid ofany thick and thin spots that might have occurred during the process,because when you’re running through the computerized spinner, it doesn’thave a hand on it, it cant feel. So if there was a thick spot when you’rehand spinning, you could just kind of pull it a little stronger and make it alittle thinner. Or if there’s a weaker spot where it’s not quite as thick, youwould just not pull it as much, because your hand is feeling it when you arehand spinning. But a computerized spinning machine like we have, themoment you set the tension and you tell it how much to pull, it will pull thesame amount all the time. So that’s why we run it through the drawframesto make it even more consistent.

Julie Roy: Hmm, very interesting and then what happens next?

Dave Davies: Well, once we have the sliver really looking the way wewant it to look so that we can have a good quality product, we’ll put it on thespinner. What’s its going to do is depending on what the person wants it tolook like in the end, we will process it all the way from lace down to themost typical one, which most people like is the common one called Sport,but we’ll go lower and we’ll go to Medium and also one step below that. Butonce you get down to some of those lower ones, alpaca fiber is so warm,that it tends to make the products very hot. So people tend to like to stickwith more of the Sport level.

Julie Roy: Okay, so let’s review that for a minute. What are the variouslevels then of the yarn that people could choose from?

Dave Davies: Well, you could have at the very finest, which is Lace andthen you go to Fingering which is the next step down to Sport to Mediumand we tend to run to that level.

Julie Roy: So you’ve listed the different kinds of yarn and what would theiruses be for?



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Dave Davies: Well, if you wanted to make a very, very fine shawl, youcould use Lace, as an example. Now if you wanted to knit a hat, well thenyou may want to go down to Medium. So it really depends on the kind ofthe end quality product that you’re looking for. But once you’ve spun it,you’ve got those different layers, but one other step you can do, which wedo all the time in the mill, is what’s called plying. The plying step is, you’llhear people say, I have 2-ply, 3-ply 4-ply, all that means is that we’ve takena single strand, that’s off of the spinner and we’ve combined it with a certainnumber of single strands. So as an example, our typical process is we run2-ply that means we’ve taken two singles that have come off of the spinnerand we’ve put them together in the opposite direction that we’ve spun it. Sothat way the yarn comes out balanced. So when you’re working with it, itsnot constantly trying to spin up into a little circle when you’re working withit.

Julie Roy: Oh, so that’s what’s responsible then for keeping it straight,okay.

Dave Davies: Mmhmm. Now the last couple of steps that we do in theprocess, is once we have that, we want to make sure that the yarnremembers, we want it to stay straight but we want it twisted, so it hasstrength. We run it through a steamer and a steam chamber, to dry it andthen we run it onto a cone winder and that pulls it together and puts it on acone. For those we like to do the machine knitting, we use it at the conewinder and that’s the step we leave it at for them. And the nice thing aboutthat alpaca fiber, is its so soft and so wonderful to feel and use, that we tendto put it into skeins for people, so they can actually feel them. It’s hard tofeel the fiber on a tightly wound cone, but when we put it into the skein,they can actually feel how soft the fiber is and it really helps sales. This isone of the selling points for alpaca is the fineness and how soft it is to thetouch.

Julie Roy: And how much yarn do you usually put in a skein?

Dave Davies: Typically it’s a three ounce skein. There’s one last thingthat we can do, is at the Carder stage, instead of turning it into the roving,one of the options is turn it into a batt at that point. A batt can be used likewe said; you can use the batt for quilting or for hand felting. Then we haveone final machine that we can actually put that batt onto and make sheets of



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felt for people and some of the people that have turned products of sheetsfrom felt have been very creative. They have made things like inserts forshoes and so that you have a nice warm place to put your foot. They’ve alsomade things like skirts and vests from those sheets of felt and then thereare some people who are just so creative and artistic that they actually takethe sheets of felt and then hand stitch onto it, beautiful drawings or beautifulwhat I would call pictures.

Julie Roy: Oh, so in other words, make them works of art as well.

Dave Davies: Absolutely, they make some wonderful works of art.

Julie Roy: That’s fascinating.

Dave Davies: You can take those and hang them on the wall, becausethey can make a wall hanging, that’ll also keep the house warmer.

Julie Roy: {chuckles} Right and on a real cold night you can take it off thewall and put it on your lap.

Dave Davies: Yeah.

Julie Roy: Make it as a lap warmer.

Dave Davies: There you go.

Julie Roy: Now Dave, tell us a little bit more about how alpaca fiber differsfrom some of the other fine wools and other fibers?

Dave Davies: Well one of the things that makes alpacas so unique is thatif you actually get it under a microscope and you take a look at the actuallyfiber itself, in terms of what it looks like is you’ll see the shaft of the fibertends to be very smooth. Now the suri fiber is very, very smooth and thevery smooth shaft. Whereas, if you look under a microscope for a wool,you’ll see that even though the micron count might be really, really fine theactually shaft itself has all kinds of little barbs, sticking out microscopicallyso that when you’re actually touching it, it just doesn’t feel as smooth.

Julie Roy: That’s called the prickle factor, isn’t it?



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Dave Davies: Yes, it is. It’s called the prickle factor. So its really funwhen we do tours here, its really fun to get people who have been so usedto using wool and they’ll come in and do a tour and its so fun to watch thembecause they walk through and they tacitly touching everything. They justwant to touch it and touch it and touch it because they are just not used tofeeling something so nice and such a nice handle as alpaca.

Julie Roy: You know Dave, that’s so true about touching alpaca, instead ofa sign saying do not touch, don’t we breeders say, touch me, touch me allthe time?

Dave Davies: Yes, we sure do.

Julie Roy: Yeah, now Dave, are there any kind of limitations thatsomebody needs to take into consideration before they send you their fiberfor processing?

Dave Davies: Well, yes there is. There are a couple of considerationswhen you’re looking at your yarn. One of the things is the staple length,which is the amount of length the fiber has grown from the skin to the tip ofthe animal in a year’s period of time. If the animal is longer then six inches,in all mills, there is a sizing requirement and if it gets longer then six inches,then what’ll happen is it will wrap on the machines and get stuck and so wehave a resizing method that we go through that if it is longer then that. Theother thing that you have to take a look at, is you really have to look atwhat’s the strength, we call it the tinsel strength of the alpaca fiber. Youmay want to take your fiber, because you want to make a really nice shawland be very delicate, but what you have to look at is how strong the fiberitself is. If we spin it all the way down to Lace yarn, which is very few fiberstogether, they may constantly break and that’s one of the limits you have tolook at is you just not every alpaca fiber can go to Lace, because it will justcontinually break.

Julie Roy: Is there something that can be done before the fiber is sent tothe mill to determine if the fiber could withstand, say a fine Lace weight?

Dave Davies: Well, one of the ways to determine is you can take a look atjust by getting a very, very small few strands of the fiber and pull it and see



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if it snaps. If it snaps very easily, then yeah, it’s going to be a difficultprocess and it probably won’t be able to go to Lace. But if you just ask yourmill, that this is my request, I’d like to come up to this height, please bring itto a lower level. They’ll be more then happy to test it for you on themachines to see if it can work before they run it.

Julie Roy: So what you’re saying is, to bring it up that high, meansactually the finer or thinner the yarn and to make it low is the thicker.

Dave Davies: That’s correct.

Julie Roy: Okay, it seems opposite, logically; it’s the opposite of the way Iwas thinking. Anything else you want to share with us about processing?

Dave Davies: Well, the one thing I would like to additionally add to it forthe people who’re listening, for our particular fiber mill, we don’t require alot of things to happen to the fiber before it gets to us. Some mills like it tobe absolutely perfectly clean as everything. But what we ask them to do , isbasically, just skirt it and what we’re looking for in the skirting process isthat before they send it to us, make sure that anything that is really, haseither dung filled or really just grossed area, just cut that off.

Julie Roy: In other words, just cut it off; just eliminate it before it gets toyou?

Dave Davies: Absolutely, just eliminate it before it gets to us, becausewhat it’ll do is it’ll just get into a machine and then it will take more fiberaway from you then if you just would have pulled it off in the first place.

Julie Roy: Well that makes sense and so it sounds like your goal in workingwith the breeders is to make sure that the majority of the fiber we bring youis going to be able to come out in a finished product.

Dave Davies: Absolutely, we’re trying to give back to you as much fiber aswe most possibly can and that’s the way we treat it in our mind like gold.It’s come in because it’s important to you, its precious to you and we wantto make sure that we can return as much of that to you as possible.

Julie Roy: So you’re trying to minimize waste.



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Dave Davies: Absolutely.

Julie Roy: So are your charges based on the pounds that you receive orthe pounds that you actually process?

Dave Davies: No, for our customers we actually do a nice job for them inthat we only charge for them the finished product. We won’t charge you forthe dirt and the garbage and the other things that are attached to it, all thathay that the animal liked to roll in. We don’t charge you for that. We onlycharge for the actually finished product, what the weight is.

Julie Roy: Do you want to share a little bit about what your charges are,because I think that the listeners will find it interesting to know that there’sa variety of prices that you’ll pay for the various stages that you provide.

Dave Davies: Okay, well for instance if a person just wanted a cloud,which is that picking stage its just $5.50 per pound. If someone wanted togo through the fiber separator stage, where they’re actually going to get itcleaned up and actually taking some of that course fiber out, then its $14.00a pound. If they’re interested in having it come to a point where it’s a battor a roving, then its $16.00 a pound. If they’d like to turn that into a feltsheet, or if you remember that drawframe we drew it through to make theroving even more consistent, that’s a sliver, that becomes $22.00 a pound.If they’re interested in going to the bulk yarn stage, which is 2-ply, its$33.00 a pound and Medium yarn is $31.00. The Sport, which is the mostpopular one we have and that’s $29.00 for 2-ply yarn. For the Fingeringyarns, its $31.00 and for the Lace yarn its $33.00 and those are all 2-plyyarn. So it’s very method. I have seen other mills where even just to runthrough the fiber separator they charge $14.00 a pound, additional cost ontop of the regular yarn price. So we don’t even consider that as part of aseparation. If you go to yarn, it goes through the fiber separator; it’s not anadditional cost.

Julie Roy: Well, that’s good to know. You’re saying then that for thoseprices per pound they receive the yarn and then is there an additional costfor getting it on skeins?



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Dave Davies: If they would like the skeins, so that people can actuallytouch it and feel the alpaca fiber, we turn them into three-ounce skeins at$1.50 each for the bulk and Medium and Sport. Fingering and Lace is just alittle bit more, its $2.25 for Fingering and $3.00 each for the Lace.

Julie Roy: Okay, so in other words, add an additional $1.50 to say $3.00to have it made into skeins.

Dave Davies: Yes.

Julie Roy: And then is there a setup charge?

Dave Davies: There is one other fee that we deal with and that’s what wecall a lot fee. That’s where the user gets to define their lot and that’s the funpart for some people because for some people they love to have and be ableto say, this sweater comes from my animal and then they name the animal.So if they would like us to send it back to them so that they can actually saythat this is that particular animal, then they’ll define that as one lot. So ifwe have an animal called Cinderella and so we can send it back to them andsay here’s Cinderella’s yarn and they can make a sweater out of it, directlyout of Cinderella’s yarn and there would be a $20.00 lot fee. We have otherranches who have all the similar color or different color and they don’t reallymind. They like to have it all put together, so they may send in 100 poundsof alpaca fiber of the same color or mixed colors and say that’s one lot forthem and that would be a $20.00 fee. So it’s really up the individual todecide what they would like to do.

Julie Roy: So you can either have it as an individual animal or a blend ofmany animals or a blend of all one color. I think one of the things that I did,and I really was happy that you offered this service, was that I had a femalethat was a little bit older, maybe a little bit courser then she was when shewas younger and then I had a couple of others that were the same color, buta little softer and I decided to do a blend so that the female with the courserfiber got blended in and its still made just beautiful Sport yarn.

Dave Davies: Absolutely, we leave it up to each individual rancher to dothat, because it is, it’s a nice way to combine it, if you’d like to combine itand sometimes we can get some of the most beautiful colors when youactually blend multiple colors in together.



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Julie Roy: Yes, I think you can create, like you said, some gorgeousblends and heathers and varieties. So Dave, in the beginning youmentioned that you decided to get the family involved with your milloperation, how is that working out now?

Dave Davies: It is working out better then I ever thought. {chuckles}

Julie Roy: Oh, that’s wonderful.

Dave Davies: Well, it’s been very nice to be able to turn to the kids andturn to my wife and say, you know what, you tell me what you’re interestedin and it’s been really interesting to see how each person has had their ownunique interests. So for instance, my wife thought this was going to besomething that oh, I was interested in and I would really like. And yeah thisis kind of a nice thing for my husband to do, so yeah we can do this. Well,boy I’ll tell you, she has just gotten so much love out of working with theanimals that she just loves figuring out who she should breed to and whichanimal should breed and how can she combine their strengths and theirweaknesses and combine it so that I can get the best out of those animalsand make the nicest combinations. So she is very, very heavily into whatbreeding she wants to do and she offers all the stud services. Where myson, Joshua, he just loves animals, so he’s taking over the day-to-dayoperations and really gotten to a point where he’s just feeding and caring forthe animals. He just loves them. He can tell you every name. He can tellyou when they were born and he can just tell you all kinds of things aboutthe animals, things that I don’t even remember.

Julie Roy: Wonderful.

Dave Davies: He kind of took that over from his older sister Rachael,because she had a really super interest in the animals, too. Now that she’sin college, she’s not doing the animals as much. But she comes and helpsme at certain ends of the fiber processing. She loves to do plying andsteaming and pulling out the last end of the fiber and turning it into yarn.So that’s what she’s gotten real interested in going into. Caleb’s been thekind of guy that says, you know what, I want to get this work done and we’llget this done quickly. So he takes care of the parts that you really don’twant to have to spend a lot of time with and that is cleaning up after the



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animals, and since they are so unique that they create one spot, one placeand they take care of it. He comes in cleans it up and he’s gone, he’sfinished it out and he likes doing that and getting that done with.

Julie Roy: {chuckles} Yes.

Dave Davies: Michael just loves to work around and just see what’s goingon. He’s ten now and so he comes into the mill and he’ll watch and see andhe’s been learning what the machines look like and how they process, but hekeeps things clean for me. So he’ll go in and he’ll make sure thateverything’s cleaned up, machines are clean. He comes through and sets upmy supplies and makes sure that my soaps are there and that we have thesoap available, so he’s been doing a really nice job making sure everything’scleaned up for us, but he’s keeping his eye on which machines he’s learning.

Julie Roy: So he’s sort of your mill processor in the making then?

Dave Davies: He’s the mill processor in the making definitely.

Julie Roy: Great.

Dave Davies: And Lindsey, my other daughter, my older daughter, too,she likes to come in and she’ll process in the middle, it can be just any partof the processing that we’re interested in having get done for that day. So ifwe need to get a bunch of picking in, she’ll just come in and do all thepicking and making sure that all of the process get through the pickingmachines. So it’s just kind of which particular one we’re looking for to getdone, she’ll pick up and help us out with.

Julie Roy: That sounds like a wonderful family business and they’ve beendoing this just since you said, 2003.

Dave Davies: That’s right. And it’s been a lot of fun. It’s just been sowonderful for my commute time. I just walk outside, which I used to walkout from my house, but right now, I’m still walking from the trailers. Wewalk out from the trailer, I commute all the way to the barn and I startworking.

Julie Roy: Yes.



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Dave Davies: And so once and a while, I’ll actually see a bunny pass meand that’s about it.

Julie Roy: {laughter} Yeah, isn’t it just wonderful and we call this theAlpaca Lifestyle.

Dave Davies: Yes, it is and we’ve gotten so much into that, as the nameof our ranch, we’ve named it A Simpler Time. We go with our logo as Whereyou can feel the lifestyle and its so true, because its not only the animals,but it’s the whole way of life and what we’ve been enjoying and spendingtime with as a family. We are just so glad we’re able to do things together,here on our ranch and enjoy having other people come visit us.

Julie Roy: Why don’t you give us just a little bit more information aboutwhere you’re located and if people wanted to come visit you, how theywould best get in touch with you.

Dave Davies: Okay, well we’re located actually in east San Diego, we’reup in the hills of El Cajon, that’s about twenty minutes outside of downtownSan Diego. If people are interested in giving me a call and wanted to have atour at any time, they can give us a call at 619-579-9114 and talk toBarbara. She’ll be more then happy to set up a tour. If they’re justinterested in seeing some of the things about our family, our lifestyle, ourranch, our animals, our stud services, any of those things, they can go tothe website at www.ASimplerTimeMill.com and they can find out all theinformation, everything from when we have hoedowns for the kids and allthe fun that we do here.

Julie Roy: Yes.

Dave Davies: To when’s shearing.

Julie Roy: And in addition to your mill, I know you also have been goinginto raising some elite alpacas and you’ve got a beautiful herdsire. Do youwant to tell us just a little bit about him?

Dave Davies: I’d be glad to. We’ve really looked around and we’ve spentquite a bit of time looking for different animals and enjoying the herdsires



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that are out there and there are so many good ones. But boy, I’ll tell you,when Barbara put her eye on Calypso Cloud, she got a smile on her face thatwas so big and exciting that she couldn’t hardly contain herself. She lookedat that animal and said, boy, this guy’s going to do well. So sheimmediately went to Misty Ridge, who is a co-owner of Calypso Cloud andsaid, hey, we would be interested in getting a partnership with you and theydid. They offered a partnership with us and we’ve been so happy to dealwith them and work with them. Calypso Cloud is a very dense, beautifulsilver gray animal and he is so incredible. If you put your hands on him andyou touch his fiber, you can’t even get down to his skin, it’s so dense and sowonderful. Matter of fact, when he hit the show tour, he absolutely just tookcolor champions all over the place and it’s just exciting to see all thedifferent ribbons he has now. And he’s now been producing that samequality in his offspring and for us as a particular owner; it’s been kind of nicebecause it’s been amazing how many females he’s actually produced for us.Most all of the animals that he’s produced have been females.

Julie Roy: Oh, that’s wonderful. Sounds like you’re beating the odds of the50/50.

Dave Davies: We have tremendously beaten the odds in the 50/50. He’sat 90% right now, females.

Julie Roy: Oh great, and you said that he is very dense and he’s gray, ishe also fine?

Dave Davies: He has very nice fiber, yes, he is fine. He’s got that handlethat you just want to die for. I got to help out on the last show and thejudges were showing me the different touches for the different handles andhow much there is quite a uniqueness and difference in handle of animal andCalypso has that really nice handle that you just really want to put yourhands down into and enjoy.

Julie Roy: Oh, that’s wonderful. What are the future goals of your farmnow?

Dave Davies: Well, our future goals have been to meet our customer’sneeds and one of the things that we’ve been noticing our customers reallylike to be involved in is all aspects of fiber. So in the future, we’re looking



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forward to being able to finish out building our home and then once we haveour home finished, we’ll be able to take the buildings that we’ve built andturn them into classrooms. So we’ll be able to hold spinning and weavingand felting classes for people to come and actually get their hands into thefiber and really make some fun stuff and enjoy doing that. That was part ofwhat we really enjoy doing and that’s one of the reasons we want to share itwith others. Since we are Shachtk Spindle dealers, we also get into thespinning for hand spinners and weaving and offer different looms for peopleso they can start that process up too. I’ll tell you, there’s nothing quite asrelaxing as to sit down, I sit down and I enjoy even, getting down and doinga waving process and doing some weaving and its so fun to see the creation,the colors and the different things you can create that alpaca offer for us.

Julie Roy: That is so true and we really are so glad that you did get intothe mill business. I can speak from my experience that you have highquality products, very consistent yarn. The clouds that I’ve gotten mostrecently are wonderful. The hand spinners that I’ve had come out to ourranch, have just been raving about how gorgeous they are and I can’t say itsdue all to my animals, I have to say it’s due to your processing. So youreally are making me look good and I so really appreciate that you are in theSouthern California area and available to the breeders. So if breeders don’tlive nearby, is there something that they can do, so that they can use yourservices?

Dave Davies: Absolutely, it’s really nice that we have the ability to getfiber back and forth to people and like I said when you take the raw fiber offthe animal and put it in a bag. Well, one of the nice tricks you can do is justtake a common vacuum, in terms of the hose end attachment, put a nylonstocking over the top of that, put it inside the clear bag and suck all the airout of it. Once you have the air out of it, you’ve got that bag flattened downto almost nothing. You can twist it around, load it up in a box and put manylayers of alpaca animals directly in the box and ship it to us. We’ll be able totake that box, open it up and turn it into the yarn, or the felting or any otherproduct that you would like to have done and send it back to you.

Julie Roy: That’s wonderful Dave. That’s a great hint about how to suck theair out of the bags of fiber so that you can ship so much of it all at once.And Dave, is there an specials that you can offer our listeners?



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Dave Davies: Yes, we would love to. We would like to make sure thatthere’s a coupon included so that you would be able to get off of any of thesupplies for our Schacht Spindle dealings on any looms or supplies, we’d beoffering free shipping along with a 10% discount for anybody who wanted touse the stud services.

Julie Roy: That’s wonderful. So those details would be found on thecoupon that’s included with this CD set.

Dave Davies: Yes, it will be.

Julie Roy: Dave, before we draw this interview to a close, I just want toencourage our listeners to get in touch with you, at least go to the websiteand look at all the things that you offer and you’re wealth of informationabout the processing of the alpaca fiber. I know that in the future, youprobably will be on the speaking circuit as well and so if any of our listenerssee you at a show or hear you speak, I know you’re approachable and I’msure you’d be happy to meet them and answer any of their questions.

Dave Davies: Completely glad to talk to people. We just have so much funtalking to people and getting to know people in this business, that we wouldbe glad to spend time with people. It’s just been so much fun getting toknow people and I really appreciate you Julie, asking us to come on and talkwith you. This has been really enjoyable for us. It’s been enjoyable to talkabout one of our favorite subjects and that’s alpacas. And so, we appreciateyou putting this together to help our people get to know things and howthey can do things even better. This is a great forum and I appreciate, Julie,you putting this together.

Julie Roy: Oh, well thank you so much Dave, because it’s certainly beenmy pleasure and I think this has been a really informative interview, sothank you and Barbara again for your time and for sharing your love ofalpacas and your knowledge and I agree with you, raising alpacas is so muchfun. Bye-bye now.

Dave Davies: Bye-bye.



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About our Facilitator

Julie Roy is an Entrepreneur and Executive Business Coach, author and professionalspeaker. She received her professional business coaching certification in 2001. Then in thefall of 2004, after purchasing a house on 10 acres in Southern California, she and herhusband of 26 years started their herd of huacaya alpacas. In their first year, they grewfrom 4 to 15 and at the end of their second year they expanded the operation to include theagisting of 10 suris. Now at the four year mark over 50 alpacas call Alpacas of Anza Valleyhome. Moreover, their business plan calls for a growth of 10 to 12 more each year.

Julie’s personal mission is to inspire and educate people in their chosen business venture tocreate their desired lifestyle. With her expertise in facilitating, Julie identified andinterviewed every expert in the series to keep the listener current in the alpaca industry.

Julie RoyPO Box 390191Anza, CA 92539951-763-5686

Alpacas of Anza ValleyCreating Financial Enjoyment

www.AlpacasAV.comwww.AlpacaCDs.comwww.AlpacasNextDoor.com

Documents

ABS Dave Davies BK6 - alpacabusinesssecrets.com