Stopped at a friend’s farm today & it was Shear The Alpacas Day.
She’s had these 2 a little over a year & Google told her to shear every other year.
I helped with #1 - held the lead clipped to the halter.
While 2 more helpers held her down at the shoulder & held another lead around a hind to prevent those sharp hooves from nailing anyone.
Poor pitiful alpaca girl bleated about the terrible abuse & spit/snorted the whole time.
But got up & trotted off none the worse & a lot lighter.
#2 was being done as I left.
My guesstimate is at least 1lb of fleece came off #1.
A quick Google said raw, untreated fleece could go for $15/lb.
I told friend to bag the clippings & call local yarn places. Thinking there might be someone who spins fleece into yarn.
Any other way to make some money off the unwashed fleeces?
Not an alpaca owner. But I worked for a veterinary hospital that treated A LOT of them. We even had our own teaching herd of alpacas.
Later, one of my best friends (whom I worked at the hospital with) got into raising alpacas. They have since ditched the alpacas for babydoll sheep.
Most of the money-making in alpacas comes not from fiber (fleece) or products but from convincing other people that they are a great investment and to spend tons of money purchasing overpriced stock. 
They are neat animals, but if you are doing it right, they are high maintenance animals.
If money were no object, I’d be happy to own a few as pets. But I have 4 equines; I don’t need more expensive pets. 
I have seen sheep sheared at a community fall fair.
I have a friend who dabbles in spinning weaving and fabric art.
My guess is there has to be an intermediary between the shearing process and the crafts shop because those fleeces were going to take some major washing way beyond anything you could manage in a suburban laundry room next to your craft room. I don’t know how raw fleece is cleaned but it’s going to be a job to get it to the point a fabric artist can card and spin it
Fleece value can depend on what kind of alpaca variety they are. One type has coarser fleece, less value. The other variety of Alpaca has a much finer hair, which makes more desirable yarn. Then there are details, how Alpaca was trimmed. Any double cuts? Shorter fiber has less value, along with how much “other stuff” is in the fleece, also called VM for vegetable matter. The fleece needs edges picked clean of any poop, VM needs to to be removed as much as possible before processing to keep value up. No one wIll get it all unless they actually card it, but hand picking the obvious VM out helps.
My friend with Alpacas says to wash the Alpaca yarn projects in shampoo, since this is a hair product, not a wool product. Air dry. I do not believe Alpaca fleece has any grease in it, like wool has lanolin.
I am reading that your friend just wants to get rid of the fleece, not make any projects with it? You/she might Google wool mills in your area/State, to find a place to clean, card and spin it. Or just offer the fleece for sale on a local sales paper like the Amish use. Any other Alpaca owner friends you could ask about uncleaned fleece prices?
We have the Frankenmuth Wool Mill, but they are small, have a backlog of fleeces to do. Very nice people, do nice work carding and spinning yarn or making it into bats for lining comforters.
My knitting group visited there a couple weeks ago to watch the INTERESTING process of fleece to yarn. They do not dye it, returned to owner in natural colors it came with. They had bags of various greys, brown, black, spotted, as well as various creamy whites from ALL KINDS of sheep. They do Alpaca fleeces too. It was fun watching the wool go from fleece to skeins of one ply yarn, then spun together into 2 or 3ply, balls of yarn. The machines are amazingly fast, vintage 1930s. Funny how the knitting ladies talked about yarn in yards, while the mill folks went by yarn weight!
Husband learned the neck ‘hold of death’ on llamas, when some folks wanted them trimmed like the ponies. Amazingly after holding them like that, they quit kicking, spitting and fussing, stood well! Probably works well on Alpacas too, if she can get someone to show it to her. Did you leave top knots on their heads after shearing? I think it helps keep them from overheating in summer. All Alpacas locally, have topknots, male and female. Does she worm hers regularly? Owners say getting brainworms from wild, White Tail deer in pastures is the major cause of death. I believe my my friends worm their Alpacas monthly.
@Scribbler a quick Google told me washing the fleece isn’t that complicated.
Basically it gets soaked in a soapy solution, rinsed & done.
Just South of us there’s a very active Reenactment (French-Indian Wars) community: Feast of the Hunter’s Moon.
Participants go the whole 9 yards, living in canvas tents, cooking over woodfires…
Vendors sell handmade, true-to-period clothing (for hefty prices!).
I’d think some still card their own wool/fleece to make yarn.
@goodhors They did leave the topknot on the one finished before I left.
They laid both down to shear & from what I saw, without your DH’s knowledge of The Grip, standing was not an option.
I suggested the fleece might have value, thinking even a low price beat just tossing it.
I’ll pass on the VM removal info & where it goes from there 
A PA friend has sent me links to their Farm Show where teams compete against each other in a Sheep to Shawl contest where sheep are shorn, wool is processed, spun into yarn & a shawl is woven in an amazing matter of 2-1/2hrs 
ETA:
This is what came off the 1st shorn
I know Etsy is a bit of a quagmire but I would think she could sell it there or something similar, wouldn’t cost much to ship? People sell chicken feathers as craft supplies and that fleece should be worth something to someone.
We lived on a sheep ranch for years, shearing is a really interesting thing. My BIL still does some shearing for big ranches in ID and a few easy local small farms.
I know nothing about alpacas, but I’ve always thought they were super cute! My sister is a big knitter so I always thought it would be cool to make some yarn for her. Does the fleece come off in one piece like it does with sheep? If not, did they arrange it into an alpaca shape for this photo? It looks like the alpaca melted 
@OnAMission I suggested Etsy, though I’ve heard they may not be the easiest to sell through.
I’d bet that whole fleece weighed maybe 2#?
This gal has a lot going on at any one time, so I’m hoping the fleece didn’t just go in the trash.
She had no idea it could be used or wanted by anyone 
@equinelibrium I had that same thought!
But that’s how it was left after the alpaca got up.
Regular grooming - if alpacas need it - did not appear to have happened 
So, yeah, fleece came off pretty much in one alpaca-shaped piece 
My cousin has an Alpaca farm. They shear the alpacas in the spring, skirt the fiber (remove foreign material and debris), and then send alpaca fiber out to a certified sorter who grades the fiber and determines what to send to a local mill for yarn and roving, and what to send to the NEAFP (New England Alpaca Fiber Pool).
I do see people selling unprocessed fiber on Etsy.
Hope that helps!
