Shearing Support

Our cat, Fern, enjoying the sun

So we shear our sheep about a month before they lamb to ensure that if there is any weakness in the fiber due to lambing/lactation that it will be at the tip of the fiber. While some of you may think that this is crazy to shear sheep in the middle of winter, it is actually beneficial. By shearing the wool off the ewes become more sensitive to the weather and are more likely to go indoors if it is raining, if they have lambs with them the lambs will follow and will not become cold and drenched. Another advantage is there will be no wool for the lamb to mistake for the teat which it needs to find for that essential liquid, colostrum.

This year for shearing there were about 30 ewes that needed to be sheared, this meant it was going to take some time and effort, a lot more then previous years. This was going to be an all day affair. I haven't sheared sheep for long periods of time like the professional shearers in New Zealand so I wasn't sure I could accomplish this alone. After watching some other shearers I set myself to make an assistant for shearing.

Most of the professional shearers have some form of back support while shearing because for the majority of the time shearing sheep you are in a crouched position, and from experience it is not the easiest to stay in. A couple of days prior to shearing I started to think how I could make my own back support and after seeing some examples online and from other shearers I set out to make my own.

The sling in action!

My first stop was at an equine tack shop where I acquired a saddle girth. (It had to be a western girth since I do ride western at school). The girth serves as the part of the support that will rest against my chest when I stretch down to shear the lower parts of the sheep. My next stop was a hardware store to acquire some rope and a pulley. This lets me hang my sling somewhere and tie it off in any direction I want, while allowing me movement in any direction. The last piece of this is actually an old unused exercise band that serves as the elastic to support me and provide more support when I am lower shearing the sheep. With that I had my shearing sling made and ready to go!!

Now the scientist in me needed to know that this was actually going to help before using it. It turns out there have been scientific studies that show that the effect of back support on the spinal forces while shearing. These show that the use of the support reduce the compressive and shear forces present while shearing sheep. This reduction was found to be significant and reduces the overall load on the spine while shearing!



With that I'll talk about how shearing went in the next post.