Preserving an Alpaca Hide

Here is Sangria

We're not sure why, but Sangria the alpaca had not been well for about two weeks and we have been trying to nurse her back to health. After two trips to the vet, daily medications and lots of effort it became apparent that she was not going to make it. On Friday afternoon she died quietly in the shelter with her alpaca friends sitting watch.

Not being one to miss an opportunity, we turned her death into a learning opportunity. For those who are a little squeamish, stop reading here.

One of the main reasons for raising alpacas is for their fiber. Since Sangria was no longer going to need her's anymore, we decided to learn about tanning hides.

When I found Sangria dead on Friday afternoon, I picked her up and moved her to the back of the property. I had already prepared her grave there the day before because it was pretty apparent that she was not going to survive. I approached the task with some trepidation. While I looked forward to the opportunity to learn a new skill, I was not looking forward to the task of skinning the alpaca. It turns out it was not as bad as I thought it would be.

The skinned hide

Once we had her in position, my son and I worked together to skin her. It was relatively easy once we got it started. We started on her chest and worked our way around her body. The hardest part of the job was working around her legs. We skinned down to her elbows an around the leg. Once we got past that part it was easy and the skin just pulled away.

Scraping the hide. I really had to get into the
work to hold the hide in place while scraping.

After skinning her, we placed her in her grave, sprinkled a little lime on top and buried her. The next task was to scrape the hide and remove any fat and muscle that was still attached to the skin. This was the hard part. It doesn't come off as easy as you might think. At first I tried to scrape the hide with a knife, but I found that to not be very effective. Then I moved to the machete and worked on the curved surface of the log. That worked much better because I could apply firm pressure against a 1-2" section of the hide at a time. I worked from the center of the hide to the outside edges, making sure I removed all fat and muscle.

Once the hide was scraped, we had to salt the skin side to help remove the water from the skin. We laid the hide out, skin side up, on chicken wire stretched between two saw horses and poured about 5 pounds of salt on the it. Since then we have had to change the salt out several times because it soaks up the water and stays wet. I figure that can't be good for the uncured hide.

Salting the hide with about 5 pounds of
non-iodized salt.

I'm not sure if this little experiment will work, but we'll soon find out. I halfway considered doing the tanning myself as well, but didn't want to mess with the chemicals and the proper disposal of those chemicals. I think I'll leave that to the pros. In the meantime, we will continue salt-curing hide. Here are some of the links I used to educate myself before attempting this project:

This Mother Earth article talks about how to tan the hide:  http://www.motherearthnews.com/homesteading-and-livestock/how-to-tan-a-hide.aspx#axzz2hhLGreFl

http://www.dutchhollowacres.com/2010/03/28/alpaca-death-preserve-alpaca-hide-fur/

Also, YouTube has a wealth of information on how to prepare a hide for tanning. There were several videos that were particularly helpful, but I can't find them now.