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Shearing
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Best management practices for shearing | Do it 1-2 times year |
| Why is shearing important? | It reduces heat stress and parasite load and cleans up lambing environment |
| When is the best time to shear? | Avoid cold and wet weather, before lambing, time it to about an inch in mid summer |
| How to process wool | Skirt it, roll it, bale it (if necessary) |
| Skirting | Cleaning fecal and vegetable matter from wool |
| Rolling | Roll the wool into a ball for easy transportation |
| Baling | Put wool into a baling for about 500 lb bales, only happens on large operations |
| Greasy fleece | Unwashed but skirted and rolled |
| Weight with fleece | Heavier is better |
| Clean yield | Percentage of fleece pounds that will remain as clean after scouring |
| Scouring | Washing the fleece, tends to make it lose about half its weight due to lanolin |
| Lanolin | Greasy coating on fleece |
| 3 major criteria of wool judging | Crimp, staple length, handle |
| Crimp | Natural waviness or curl of wool fibers |
| What do you want in crimp? | More crimp (tighter) per inch is better |
| Staple length | Length of individual fibers |
| What do you want in staple length? | Longer is better |
| Handle | Softness and feel of wool |
| What do you want in handle? | Depends on market, typically want softer handle for textiles |
| Old wool grading systems | Blood system, spin count system |
| Blood system | Based on percent of Merino genetics in fleece, higher is better, rarely used |
| Spin count system | Based on theoretical number of yards that can be spun from 1 lb of clean wool, rarely used |
| Modern wool grading system | Microns system |
| Microns system | Measures the fiber diameter in microns (one millionth of a meter), smaller is better |
| Was wool always the point of raising sheep? | No, it used to be a byproduct |
| How much do professionals charge to shear sheep? | $10-20 a head, often more than wool will produce |
| Carding | Separating and aligning fibers into loose continuous roving |
| Combing | Further aligns fibers |
| Spinning | Twists fibers into yarn |
| Plying | Combines fibers into multiple strands |
| Dyeing | Adding color to wool, can be done at any stage, not as popular now due to natural colors |
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