The Yak is a gigantic bovine with an exuberant mantle who adapted himself to survive to the harsh climates of the high mountains. Yaks live up to 6000 mt between Mongolia and the Tibet’s plateau, the Pamir and the slopes of Himalaya. The specimen who live on the highest altitudes develop a very thick hair, sometimes it’s so long that touches the ground. Their hair is characterized by long hair on their back and a thick and soft hair in the lower parts. The colors vary from black to dark brown with more or less bright shades which can also be white when closer to the muzzle. The male can reach up to 800 kg, they have huge horns and have a dark or brown mantle. Adult females weight about 300 kg and their horns are smaller and have a hair similar to males’. The baby yaks, both male and females have brighter mantle and thinner horns.

Yaks are safeguarded and protected and they’re considered holy animals for the native people. The shepherds preserve them and use their milk for sustenance and their hair for the production of wool, which contributes to the sustain of the families’ economy. At the end of the winters the Yaks get their annual combing; from their belly and lower parts comes a soft and precious fleece which can be spinnable with super thin with 12-16 microns, measures even thinner than the cachemire. The precious Yak yarn is one of the lightest between the animal fibers, and it’s without any doubt an ecologic and sustainable alternative. Each year adult yaks produce at least 1 kg of undercoat hair a year, while the younger yaks barely produce few hundred grams. Shepherds usually recover this hair from the bushes.

The value and the qualities of this fiber and its harvesting procedure do not harm in any way the Yaks, and this gave us courage to put the Yak into our fibers. We directly buy Yak flakes from their countries of origin, more precisely from Mongolia, and we do the spinning process in Italy, creating pure or mixed yarns with various fibers such as Bamboo or Hemp, creating a final product with the original Yak’s hair color.