I sheared our sheep last week on one of the coldest days in our area. Our plan was to have our ewes locked in overnight to prevent frost from forming on them so the fleeces would be nice and dry to shear. By locking them in just for the night there was no way that they could have frost on them. Well it didn't work out as planned. Because it was so cold the barn got a lot colder than it has been before that a thin layer of frost formed on the inside of the building! There was even frost on our cameras (and cobwebs)!Unfortunately I had a late start to the day because I had to wait for the sheep to dry off. Even with this delay shearing went great.
I learned to shear sheep at a sheep shearing school a few years ago so we do not hire a professional shearer to come and shear our flock. This saves us a little bit of money but also takes a significant amount of energy on my part that it took several hours for me to shear 30 ewes.
This year we had a couple of our ewes coated for parts of the year and one coated for the entire year. The coats serve to protect the fleece from dirt, rain, hay, grain, and any other things we don't want in a fleece. The one coated for the entire fleece was the cleanest fleece I have ever seen in my life. It was also a lot easier to shear with less dirt and vegetative matter(VM) in it. I was so amazed by how clean it was that we decided to coat all of our romneys for the next year. While this will be a bit more labor intensive the returns on the clean fleeces will definitely be worth it.
Check out our facebook page to see more photos from shearing: facebook.com/windsweptacressheep
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