Our Sheep Needed a Haircut

Shearing Day 

Wednesday, February 27, 2013
10am to 4pm
All are welcome, no experience required
Pot luck lunch. 

 RSVP info@awrinkleinthymefarm.com
 Dress for the weather.

Shearing is, if possible, in the spring before lambing which results in a cleaner environment for baby lambs…. and in the fall when fleeces are extremely clean. In a short time the fleece grows long enough to keep the sheep warm in cold weather.  Also, lambs like to climb on their mother's backs, which makes the wool much dirtier when it is long. 
 
Cutting or shaving the wool off of a sheep is called shearing. It's just like getting a hair cut and shearing doesn't hurt a sheep.  Some sheep are sheared manually with scissors or hand blades. Usually electric shears are used because it is faster.

 A professional shearer can shear a sheep in less than 2 minutes and will remove the fleece in one piece. The world record for shearing sheep is 839 lambs in 9 hours by Rodney Sutton of New Zealand (2000).  In many countries, including the United States, there is a growing shortage of qualified sheep shearers.

Sometime we shear our own sheep, but when there are more than twenty to do we have Jeff, a professional sheep shearer.  We usually shear about every eight months because our sheep fleeces would be too long for local mills to spin if we sheared once a year as was traditionally done. 



Mary Ann shears a few sheep at a time in between when fleeces are too short on shearing day and will get too long before the next one. This time our shearer, Jeff Burchstead, arrived around 10am, cleaned his boots with a bleach solution and cleaned his shears with a disinfectant. He takes this work very seriously and pays careful attention to biosecurity.

 
On shearing day this time rounded the sheep up into the back of the barn and had sorted the white ones out to a separate area (white sheep are usually done before gray, and gray before black).  We also had cleaned up the hind ends and picked the sticks and hay off their fleeces.  Because our sheep have been rotationally grazed on pasture and out in the rain their fleeces were very clean this time.

We had a great team of fiber people to help. In the barn Kalyn and Barbara guided the over to the shearing area.  Kathy recorded the number and name of the sheep.









Jeff shears sheep very efficiently with electric shears. Jeff likes to establish a rhythm with the shearing and enjoys connecting with each sheep and the process.


  

After each sheep was shorn Mary Ann guided them to the back of the barn, put betadyne solution on any small nicks that were noted. Because our shearer is skilled and careful it takes a little more time and nicks are few and small. As each sheep was returned to the flock there was lots of talking amongst themselves.  I think maybe they don’t recognize each other as the look so different without their fleeces.


Robyn swept up the undesirable wool including bellies, top knots, and manure tags.  This wool is set aside to be used to make manure tea for the garden or mulch for the blueberries.  Janet labeled the bags with the date and name of the sheep. At one point she commented about how organized and calm the shearing process is at our farm. 


It is nice when the fleeces come off the sheep’s back in a single piece though some of our fleeces are very open and end up as separate locks.    Marty carried the fleece to the skirting table where a team of 4-5 people skirted the wool and put it in a labeled paper bag. 







Skirting
It was hot!  Over 90 degrees, and the sun would have been brutal without the tent we used to make shade. To produce high quality fleeces are skirted fresh of the sheep’s back. Skirting involves removing undesirable parts of the fleece.  

  VM vegetable matter or hay and chaff. The VM is picked out by hand. Second cuts (pieces too short to spin), wool that has been rubbed felted, matted or "cotted" is removed too.  are also removed.  After the neck wool is removed, you look for the tail end. The wool with manure is removed and placed in a bag to be used in the garden as manure tea. As this was done each fleece was evaluated for length of staple, softness, crimp, cleanliness, and other qualities


At the end of the day
By 3 pm we had shorn 25 and the fleeces were all nicely skirted and each one in a labeled bag.  The sheep in the field looked much more comfortable on such a hot day.

The next step is to determine weigh the fleeces (our sheep produced 88 pounds of wool this time), evaluate which are best for hand spinners, roving or yarn and washing the fleeces using solar hot water.  I have to say, our sheep have produced incredibly soft and beautiful fleeces.