[Jacob-list] cleaning fleeces

[Betty Berlenbach]

Hi, All,

What great suggestions!  I never heard the drier thing, Linda.  If ever I have a messed up fleece, I will try it.  I have no llamas or goats, and feed hay on the ground in piles five feet apart: 24 piles, 24 sheep!  Some think this is horrible and unsanitary, and I remind them they eat grass on the ground all summer.  If they have enough, they won't eat contaminated hay.  I lose a little but mixed with urine and feces, what great compost it makes for the gardens, mine and neighbors'. I put the hay out while they gobble up the bit of grain I give them to distract them, not having an effective way to lock them out of the hay feeding area.  My biggest problem is my shearing day always comes directly after 3 days of rain or snow, for some reason.  The good part of that is it's always lovely and fairly warm, at least 25.  The bad news is that I have to shut them int he shed for 3 days prior to shearing and feed them.  There is not quite enough room to separate the hay into 5 foot apart piles, so most of the hay that is in their fleeces is on top of, and the product of the last three days.  Fortunately, I have a crack team of friends who skirt each fleece on site.  They have about 4 minutes per fleece, before the next one is ready, but it's amazing how much skirting and hay bit picking can happen with four people, two hands each, doing the job.  Any bits that have hay in them are picked out and put in another bag, which the shearer takes with him.  I am just not the kind of person with the patience to hand pick or work with anything with hay bits in it.  Any fleece which has more than 10 bits of hay in it that I can see, gets tossed and not sold, or used for quilt batts, or given away.  I don't sell any but the ones I'd buy myself...same with the lambs...
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