it was just about 10 am when the shearing family arrived. Mom, Dad, and about 6 children of various ages. Real honest to gosh rural farming family folk for sure. They farm, have sheep, and do a lot of things to make their way in this world. We’ve seen them up at the auction selling animals, plants and other good things. I really didn’t know whom I was contracting, just had heard about them at the auction and talked to them, thought it was a fair price and they were available.
Sweet little Angus was the first to go. Because he came right up to the gate to see the strangers and no one was yet worried about what was up. After all, at Windhaven, strangers mean pets and cookies! (g) Okay, not any more. Haha. Angus was all curious and then they whipped a hay bale twine halter on him and dragged him from the flock to the feed room where the shearing began. We had wanted to shear outside for great pictures but it was really pretty cold and windy and being in the smaller enclosure helped to keep the sheep calmer and corralled in case anyone got loose.
No one escaped because at one point we had oh like hmmm…. 10 people in there watching and working! Jr. and Julia came down to watch and with the girls and I and the family, yeah, it was 10 people. Dad stayed in the truck for some of the event. Jr. left to go and mow our front yard!!! (that was so nice of him! Have I said that we have the absolutely most wonderful fribors in the world????)
Jessy took pictures but it was a little dark in there. But that’s okay, we got enough for the history book and we got a little video as well, which I will try and process later tonight.
It was very cool to watch them work, carefully working the fleece off the sheep. They had never sheared Shetlands before and since, well, neither have I, I just guess it went fine by my book. I know the young lady that was shearing was careful not to double cut and did her best to keep it fairly intact.
My flock is more than half yearlings. Actually, Iris and Ivy, and Angus, and the twins, Molly and Fergus are all under like 18 months, and the three are under a year! They have never been sheared before. Only Holly and Noel have been. So, that being sad, the 5 youngins pretty much bellowed like they were being tortured to death! And that made everyone else all panicky and upset. Gideon was a little frantic as his herd was being bothered and he got too excited and head butt Jessy pretty hard. She was okay, but Gideon got time out in the old sheep paddock alone. We are learning very fast that farm animals are best locked up and contained when anything weird, unusual or stressful is going on. Lesson #497 in our Windhaven experience book.
By golly, there is a sheep under all that wool!
They asked me if I wanted them super clean shaven and I said, no, that was fine if there was a little dangly belly wool or such because the young ones were really getting stressed. We can wait a few days and then go in and clean up some of that with our own trimmers. A few got some nasty nicks because of their thrashing about. It’s hard to imagine but a little 50 pound ewe can certainly throw her weight around if she wants to.
I was a little surprised that they didn’t shear in the more traditional way, like how you see on the movies from Australia, or from some of the homesteading books. I guess that folks have their methods and well, who am I to say anything. The fleeces came off primarily solid and without a lot of double cuts, so I know I’ll be able to utilize it and sell a good deal of it. I can’t pretend to say I know everything about sheep wool and all, but it looks as good as anything I’ve bought online for spinning. And you have to learn somewhere.
Oh my gosh! Angus, my sweet little whether! He looks like his head is way too big for his little scrawny body! Of course, he was pretty happy to be finished but pretty stressed to be the first one! He hung around the gates trying to console his flockmates that they would survive the ordeal. You can see them in the back of the picture, looking like inmates headed for the long mile! Holly was bleating like a stuck pig, she was SO upset. And of course, they took her mom, Noel next… I thought Holly was going to die.
Oh my gosh, Momma Noel’s wool is SO SUPER black under that dark mocha brown outter layer! She is a black ewe! I know that sounds funny but we’ve never seen them sheared and when consulting the websites and books, it often said that black sheep are really brown sheep. But she is definitely black. And her fleece was super long and abundant. It felt wonderful, the soft underside after the shearing. And the locks are long, easily 4 inches or more. I just can’t wait to start working with these fleeces!
Everyone keeps asking me what I plan to do with my 7 bags of wool! (We rolled and tucked them into old feed bags! ) Well, I want to first pick and clean it all. And then skirt it. Skirting is where you take off the edges of the fleece that are not very desirable. Usually the legs, tail, bottom and belly areas. It’s often felted and matted badly with dung, urine and just lots of junk that is called VM or vegetable matter. Once the fleece is skirted and picked, then some I will set aside as raw wool. A lot of hand spinners and such want their wool virgin. Pretty much right off the sheep. They enjoy the whole process of washing, carding and spinning from their own poundage of wool.
However, I want to keep some of each of the sheep’s wool for myself, to process for us. We will pick it and clean it, let it dry in the sunshine and then start to card it with the hand carders. If God willing and the creek’s don’t rise, we might even be able to get a good hand crank carder to make it much much easier. They are around $300 but it’s way worth it in the long run. If we’re going to be a sheep farm… it’s going to be a good investment for sure. Once it’s nice and carded, then some we might sell, and some we might ship to a yarn mill for final processing. And some we will try and make our own wool from. And of course, we will be mixing in some of our Angora bunnie’s wool as well, since that is a beautiful fiber and will enhance our own carded wool and yarn.
Will we get rich? Hahaha….. okay, well, no. Probably not with just 7 sheep. Will we earn a bit to offset their winter hay? Oh yeah. Shetland wool is considered one of the nicest for hand work of all the British Isle sheep breeds. And in the US, the Shetlands are not super common. They were first imported to the US only in the 1990’s. I saw some very nice raw wool on eBay selling for $40 a pound! I paid $23 a pound for basic old Corredale wool… and our wool is much much nicer than that stuff. Once it is skirted I will weigh the fleeces just to see how much they ended up being. Fergus’s fleece is surely a whole lot less than say Momma’s. But I would guess that even the little ones were at least 4 or 5 pounds of wool.
I suppose that if I had the right shears and all, I could probably sheer them. However, the shears are usually at least a couple hundred bucks for good ones and there is a science to shearing. And there is a lot of kneeling and strength involved. I’m really glad to have been there and watched the whole process. Considering that it’s a once a year thing and would probably take me HOURS and HOURS to try and do, i think for awhile, I will be hiring someone yearly to do the work. It was only $10 a sheep. Heck, it costs more for me to get the girls’ hair cut and they don’t squirm and wiggle around NEARLY as much as the ewes did! I think it will just be one of those costs of having sheep. It would take me several years to save the cost of the clippers and then I would be dreadful at it for the first sheep or two, since I wouldn’t do it often. No, I think $10 a sheep is pretty fair compensation for 3 people to wrassle a sheep for a haircut.
They pretty much finished up in about an hour, hour and half. Some was getting ready, some was a bit of visiting. The flock all head for the back of the pasture for the most part and didn’t want much to do with us at all. Can’t say I blamed them. It was a pretty stressful thing all the way around.
After everyone was gone and it calmed down some, I took a little pail of sweet feed out and went to the back pasture. It took them a good sweet amount of time to come over to me and even then, they were a little wary of me. Of course, Momma Noel was truely annoyed with me, since she now has the wheelbarrow incident AND this newest tragedy to stack against me. But I sat there patiently, with a little bit of sheep crack in my hand and slowly each one of them came over and nibbled their treats. I didn’t want them to hate me. I gave them each a good scratching and they really liked that. I’m sure they felt awesome without all that heavy wool on. In fact, we saw them all sproinging and prancing about at some point in the afternoon. Rubbing on trees, and just being very silly. The little ones were particularly goofy, running about an having little head butting battles.
All in all, I would say it was a success. We have a few nicks to watch for, and we were careful to slather them up with Bag Balm and know who has them to keep a good eye on them the next few days. Unfortunately with all the squirming they were doing, its a wonder they didn’t loose a ear or a leg! She warned me ahead of time and I knew this from the books and such. It was surprising that they didn’t bleed a lot, just looked kinda ouchy for the most part. Part of the deal I suppose.
One of the funny things of the whole adventure was the egg laying hold up. Apparently, several of the ladies have been laying eggs in the feed room. Which is fine, we like that, we know where they lay. However, we were keeping them out for the shearing adventure, so they all lined up and waited for their chance to get in and lay their egg. A few gave up and when and laid in the little rooster coop out in the yard. It was pretty silly. Creatures of routine, you know.
Well, since it’s very cold still and the idea of skirting and picking and rinsing all that wool outside does not appeal, I believe they will be staying out in the feed room for a week or three. I need to get a nice piece of smooth plywood to do my picking and invite some friends over for beer and wool picking! Sort of like an old quilting bee! That will be fun. We marked each bag with the sheep’s name on it, so if anyone is interested in a little Angus 2012, or Holly fleece… you can select some! Since we’re just new at this, I think we will be selling the raw wool for $25 a pound. Free US shipping. If anyone is interested, you can always drop me an email at: sherri@chekal.com. In the meanwhile, as soon as the temperatures get a little nicer, we will be starting to process it. After all, we have gardens to get going first! Of course, if it ever stops frosting at night!!!
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