Wool sheep, was small furry farm animals

[Guest guest]

<<What happens if you don't shear the sheep? Surely their evolution didn't

include shearers. <g> Have we made that dramatic a change to the

species?>>

Unfortunately, we have. Primitive sheep, like hair sheep, do shed. Wool

sheep do not.

Five-six years ago, before I moved to this other farm, I knew someone who

had some wool sheep. She became ill and neglected her animals, other than

her son throwing them some hay and water in the winter. She couldn't get a

shearer because she only had three ewes and he wouldn't come all the way

(some 75 miles) to do three sheep at $4 a head.

She called me to ask if I would help shear her sheep. I went out there and

was just horrified by what I saw... two of the ewes were so bulky with wool

they could barely move, their dreadlocked fleece dragging on the ground.

The third one had died, exhausted from hauling its wool around; the other

two weren't far behind. Turns out they hadn't been sheared in nearly four

years. We couldn't even get the point of the clippers in the fleece. She

gave up and put them out of their misery.

When you consider that a good wool sheep produces 10-20 lbs of fleece,

growing some 3-6 inches a year, fleece that never stops growing, you can

begin to see the problem of not being able to find a shearer. Aside from

the fact of what to do with all that fleece after it's sheared. The wool

market doesn't even pay enough for the wool to pay the shearer, and most

sheep breeders don't take care of the fleece while it's growing to interest

the handspinner. A fleece full of sticks, leaves, hay and manure is not fun

to clean and spin, lol.