[Jacob-list] Re: Sheep shearing question......

[Linda]

On Tue, 3 Aug 2004 02:50:56 -0700 (PDT), Mary Hansson wrote:
>>
>>I have been amazed so often by the reluctance of shepherds to shear their own
>>sheep in this country as well.  I tend to see it as a cultural difference
>>between your land and ours.  Europeans seem to know they can clean up when
>>they get dirty, and getting dirty is not a sin.  I never understood why clean
>>clothes warranted a lecture on "keeping clean" when that was what the washing
>>machine was there for....just one of those lessons I never learned well from
>>my mother.


I think everyone joining in the Sheep Shearing thread has said that they can and do shear their own sheep when needed.  
Personally, I find alot of things much dirtier than shearing and those things I continue to do for myself.  I think 
there gets to be a point of diminishing returns, where my time is better spent on another aspect of shepherding than 
shearing.  I do a very good job of shearing, but I'm slow and my back and hands hurt for days after.  So, let Randy 
come and shear and let me spend my time carefully skirting the fleeces, washing them, flicking them and carding them.  
In that area, I'm pretty fast and turn out a good product.  It's just a productive use of time for me.  Kinda like Dave 
taking time off from work to fix one of the cars.  He spends all day, loses a day's wages, and it ends costing more 
(when the lost wages are factored in) than if I'd just run the car to the mechanic.  We try to utilize our time and 
talents the most efficiently.  So, I don't shear and Dave doesn't fix cars.  BTW - we do butcher - not only do we take 
them to the butcher, we sometimes do the actual butchering.
>>
>>I have encountered some interesting fleece characteristics this first year
>>with the sheep that have been transported from the coast of Maine down to the
>>great humid hot South in the USA.  One of the girls roo'd completely out and I
>>have the entire pelt (not her skin, but felted above the break) to prove it.
>>The rest of them are all broke their fleece during the summer.  I had the
>>"cheesy" look to the fleeces on the 3 we had since last fall at shearing time-
>>- --and they looked very healthy at that point.  Scraggly fleeces don't look
>>good!  In fact, one of those girls with the cheesy look just delivered twins a
>>couple weeks ago.  I am not sure what to put the fleece changes down to----
>>environmental change, biological challenge (different food stuffs and bugs),
>>or the characteristic of that particular bloodline, or a combination of the
>>above.


I'd be interested in more thoughts on this.  We had a ewe last spring that came with a case of mastitis and her fleece 
broke.  In that case, it was a case of the stress and perhaps the drugs used to treat the mastitis. Would "roo" be used 
to describe a broken fleece?  Or does "roo" just refer to natural shedding?   

Linda



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