Answers to Woolly Questions

Between Linda and Jenny, there were several questions about the sheep's wool. 

This is a topic I never thought I would know a thing about, but here we are.

How much total wool did you end up with?

We haven't weighed these specific fleeces yet, but last time we did weigh fleeces from this sheep breed, we found that one fleece is 10-15 pounds of wool. Our breed (Debouillet) produces some of the densest and heaviest wool per sheep of any breed. That was when we had the professional do it with his electric shears, which cut much closer and get off ALL the wool. A., being not a professional and also using hand shears, left a bit more on the sheep. But it's still 70-100 pounds of wool.

What do you do with the wool?

The first year we were here, when we had the professional shearer come, A. sold the fleeces as-is on Etsy. Literally just the fleeces straight off the sheep in garbage bags, shipped out to various people who were most probably hand-spinners. This worked in that it got them out of our shed and paid for the shearing with a little profit, but the shipping was really high and complicated on them because they were so bulky and heavy.

Last year, A. had a lot of trouble with his shearing equipment and ended up basically just chopping the wool off as best he could so the sheep wouldn't expire from heat. The fleeces weren't good enough to sell.

This year the fleeces came off much better and he wants to try bringing them to a custom wool mill a couple of hours away to get them made into actual yarn to sell.

We also have a bag of slightly less nice wool that he might try to sell to crafters and so forth. A. might wash that wool here before selling it, because then he could charge a bit more for it.

Does it smell?

Well, the wool smells like . . . sheep. The natural grease that makes raw sheep's wool very water resistant (lanolin) is what gives them their distinct smell. It's not bad, it's just . . . sheepish. But maybe I'm just used to it.

Sheepish smell in this scene was strong. (As was the inadvertant alliteration in that sentence.)

Do you have to wash it or do anything to it?

No, but you can get more money for it if you do. When A. sold the fleeces last time, he specified that they were directly off of range sheep. That is, not washed, with grass, hay, etc. still in the wool. 

But if you want to do anything with it, yes, it needs to be washed. And for yarn, it has to be washed, all the bits of vegetation removed, carded (basically combed out to be all fluffy), and THEN spun into yarn. It's a process, and one I am happy to have a mill do for me.

How often do you shear?

Every year. Some people do it before lambing, so it's easier for the lambs to find the udder and so the back end of the sheep doesn't get matted with after-birth and so on, but we don't do it until after lambing. Both because it's really cold here until after the sheep lamb, and because we don't want to be wrestling a pregnant ewe to the ground.

Do they look little afterwards?

Yes, quite comically so in the case of professional shearing, which takes the wool off right down to almost pink skin. You can see a photo showing the contrast between sheared and unsheared on our old Cotswold sheep (their wool is more long than dense) in this post.

The contrast isn't quite as noticeable on our current sheep, because the density of their wool makes it look like there isn't as much there. Also because A. didn't shear them right to the skin for fear of cutting them.

How does it look when it leaves you?

I will get a photo of the wool in a bag and post it this Sunday. Why not now? Because it's still dark outside and the bags are in the unlighted shed. 

I think that covers it. Unless there are any more questions about wool and sheep.