Why Is Cashmere So Expensive? - Animals | HowStuffWorks

North America is where Pieh and her husband, Peter Goth, come in. They have run Springtide Farm since 1997. Pieh bought Goth 11 goats for his birthday — in part, to help clear their farmland. It has been a learning experience since then.

Pieh estimates Springtide is one of 200 to 300 cashmere goat farms in North America. Most cashmere goat farms in the U.S. are small in size — less than 60 goats, says Pieh, who is also president of the Cashmere Goat Association (CGA), a nonprofit whose website claims it brings together breeders, fiber artists and others interested in these charming animals and the fiber they grow.

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March and April (spring) is when the goats start to naturally shed their winter wool, and production begins on the farms. Few U.S. farms sheer these cashmere goats, though, because of production loss and the high cost to weed out the valuable downy undercoat. Instead, most facilities hand-comb the wool. That means workers — often the farm owners themselves — sit with each animal and slowly tease out with a dog rake the fur that creates the fine wool for cashmere. Pieh says she spends up to an hour and a half with each of her goats, and each one is different.

"When you look at these goats, you see the long, draping fur," Pieh says. "That's the guard hair. The cashmere hair is under that. The crimp in cashmere is three-dimensional. And that's part of what makes cashmere so incredibly soft."

An average goat provides just 3 to 4 ounces (85 to 113 grams) of cashmere. Pieh, who says she has an "outstanding herd," gets about 5 to 6 ounces (141 to 170 grams) per goat. That means it typically takes about four goats to make enough fiber for just one cashmere sweater. Cashmere goats that produce quality fur, by the way, can live up to 10-15 years of age. When they are no longer producing, or are just too old, they are commonly harvested for their meat.

Once the cashmere fur is separated, Pieh sends samples of it for quality testing to one of two labs in the U.S. — one in Texas, one in Colorado. Most legitimate U.S. cashmere farmers, Pieh says, have made a commitment to provide only high-quality fiber, outlined in the CGA standards and backed by organizations like the Cashmere and Camel Hair Manufacturers Institute (CCMI). That means "consistency or uniformity in the fiber" — each follicle should be at least 1.25 inches (3.2 centimeters) in length in a "relaxed" (unstretched) state, and no bigger than 19 microns in diameter.

Cashmere that fails to meet these standards inevitably creates quality problems in the end product. "It causes cashmere to pill," Pieh says. "It doesn't have the strength to work with other fibers when it's spun up."

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