Our goal is to provide our customers with the very best and friendly customer service possible. We strive for a very quality product. We take pride in our craftsmanship. We promise to always find ways to improve by listening to the breeders who use our products.
We would suggest coating an alpaca that may not produce enough fiber to stay warm, an older alpaca, a thin alpaca, and crias. You will often see these alpacas shivering when it gets cold. Shivering to stay warm can use more of your alpacas energy, and take away from what your alpaca needs to maintain weight.
Click here to see photos of our happy customers and their coats.
Helpful Information For Ordering Our Coats
Measure........Measure.........Measure!
To assure proper fit, please measure along your alpacas topline, and around the widest part of the belly. See our Measuring Your Alpacas page for helpful information.
Medium Weight Coats:
For our medium weight coats we use a traditional midweight thermal fleece. It's thin, lightweight, and in terms of polar fleece ratings, it is considered a 200 weight. We use Malden Mills polar fleece. They rate their fleece in catagories of 100 wt, 200 wt, 300 wt, with 300 wt being the heaviest of the thermals. The medium weight coats are traditionally used by breeders in climates that do not get the harsh cold cold winters and heavy snow. They are also used by breeders who are in those colder winter climates, but are coating an alpaca that may not require as much help staying warm as an older alpaca, thin alpaca, or cria.
Heavy Weight Coats:
For the heavy weight coats we actually do use a medium weight fleece, it is our specialty Malden Mills fleece (due to licensing reasons we cannot use this polar fleeces technical name). It is relatively the same thickness as our traditional medium weight fleece; however, Malden Mills considers this a "micro fiber" fleece. The micro fiber fleece is 95% windproof according to their standards. It is a tighter knit fleece compared to the regular medium weight, and is yet highly breathable. This fleece would be used for alpacas that need the most help to stay warm in a cold wintery snowy climate. Alpacas that don't produce alot of fleece, an older alpaca, a thin alpaca, and crias.
When To Coat Your Alpaca
What to consider. How cold are your winter months? How much fiber does your alpaca produce? Your alpacas age and weight? Not all alpacas should be coated. If you coat a normal healthy alpaca that really doesn't need it, you can run the risk of your alpaca sweating, and getting pneumonia.
You can also check with your veterinarian to see what they suggest.
We would also recommend placing your hand between the alpaca and the coat to check body temperature daily, and make sure they are not to warm.
Due to the economy, manufacturing of polar fleece has been reduced this year. We always try to purchase our fleece in the standard black color, however, please note, this year there may be substitutions in fleece color for your orders. We would much prefer to substitue color vs. substituting a lesser quality fleece just to stay with the standard black!
We hope this will not cause any inconvenience for our customers.
