[Jacob-list] Shears

[Lynette Frick]

>

>

>

>  Are yours the lister stablemate clipper? If so, you cannot buy a shearing

> head to go on those, we already looked into that for ours. Sheep blades only

> go on sheep shearing heads as they are attached much differently. Lister

> does make the lister laser shear which runs about $325 if you want to stay

> with lister. I clip mine with a pair of 30yr. old Oster clippers that I

> bought a pair of sheep shearing heads for, they do about four sheep before

> they get hot and then we take a break. Year before last I did use the lister

> stable mates with the horse blades on them and they worked OK, but are much

> slower going as they clog up on grease about every ten strokes and tended to

> get more second cuts, making for a long day. The listers do work good for

> crutching though and you run much less of a risk of cutting them with the

> hair blades. You mentioned trimming up for show, as far as I know Jacobs are

> shown in full fleece so that wouldn't be necessary, but I guess that depends

> on which part of the country you're in some areas fit, but not short enough

> to necessitate anything more than a card and handshears.

>

 If you really don't care about the wool clip this time and you want to just

> get it done as fast as possible, you could try what we do with the market

> sheep, but if your ewes aren't used to being handled it might cause

> excessive stress. For the market sheep we wait for a warm day, hose them

> down until their is no more dirt coming up, and scrape them off with our

> hands untill they are just damp, then we shear them while they are damp, we

> shear on a fitting table. The horse clippers will cut very smooth and easily

> and won't go dull as fast due to the wool being clean. This year I ended up

> shearing most of my sheep with handshears as my blades where so dull they

> were making a mess of things. The first guinea pig looked absolutely

> horrible with lumpy wool all over, but as I got more practice they began to

> look less and less terrible and even the sad starter sheep had much less

> second cuts than the sheep clipped with mechanical shears. If you plan on

> clipping a lot of sheep you might want to have two sets of shears or even

> invest in a shearing machine (comercial), but the latter will run around

> $1200+, and your best bet would be the two sets of shears. If you have time

> to wait for them to cool down one set would probably handle all fifteen

> of your sheep, but next year you will have many more to deal with counting

> this years lambs.



Lynette Frick
IDEAL FARM
Jacob Sheep, Club Lambs
www.idealjacobsheep.com



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>

> Message: 1

> Subject: Shears

>

> Looking at buying a new set of shears.  With my horses, I love  the big

> Listers.  SO I need to buy the sheep heads, or can I get along with  the

> hair

> heads, and sheep blades for the hair heads?

>

> At this point, I plan on having the ewes sheared professionally for their

> fleeces ( Ive never sheared for fleeces... But rather to get the fleece

> off the

> sheep for spring)

>

> SO primary use would be for crutching the ewes, and trimming up for  show.

>

> I have sheared a few other breeds with these, and noticed that the blades

> wore out quickly, but they did a nice job.

>

> At this point we have 15 head of Jacobs.

>

>

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