How the animals live

The fibre in your garment comes from yaks that spend their lives on open pasture in the Khangai mountains, in herds looked after by the same families for generations. Here is what that actually looks like.

The fibre is combed, not cut

Yaks grow a soft undercoat, khöövör, to get through a Mongolian winter, and they start shedding it in spring when the weather turns. That is when it is collected, by hand, with a comb. The animal is not sheared, not restrained beyond being held still, and not harmed. We are taking off a coat the yak is in the process of getting rid of anyway.

It takes time, which is part of why yak fibre is scarce. One animal gives a small quantity once a year, and no amount of pressure changes that.

The daily rhythm

In the warm months the herd roams freely through the day, grazing where it wants to. Between seven and nine in the evening they are brought back in and the calves are penned.

There are two reasons for this, and neither is about restricting the animals. Mothers will not leave their calves, so penning the young keeps the whole herd from drifting overnight into country where it is harder to find them. And a calf left with its mother all night will drink continuously, which upsets its stomach and drains a mother who is already producing more milk than one calf needs. Separating them overnight means the calf drinks what it should, and we milk the surplus in the morning. The mother is more comfortable for it.

In the cold months the herd is left to roam. Yaks handle Mongolian winters better than any animal humans have managed to domesticate for that climate, and interfering less is the better answer. They are gathered again when the weather warms and breeding season comes round.

None of this is a welfare programme we designed. It is how herding families in Uyanga have worked for a very long time, because animals that are looked after well produce better fibre and more milk, and because a herd is a family's entire livelihood.

Fewer animals, better cared for

Welfare and land are the same question in Mongolia. An overstocked herd on tired pasture means thin animals, poor fibre, and a family with nothing to fall back on when a hard winter arrives. Mongolia lost more than seven million livestock across the drought and dzud winters of 2023 and 2024.

So when we pay for fineness and grading rather than for volume, it is not only the grass that benefits. A smaller herd on good pasture is a herd that eats properly, and a well-fed yak grows better khöövör than a hungry one. The economics and the animal point the same direction, which is rare enough to be worth building a company around.