Blog #15

First sheep, yet again

So …, when I started shearing again a few years ago, the first sheep I sheared in Georgia were a small flock near Gainesville, 5 Southdown Babydolls and a Suffolk ewe.  This was my third trip to shear them, and they were just as challenging now as they were then.  Babydolls are cute, little, woolly sheep, with heavy emphasis on little and wooly.  I’m a bit more confident and steady with my handpiece, but they’re still work.

Much like Valais Blacknose, these sheep have wool everywhere, but it’s more of a thick wool, not a long-staple wool. In the creases of their legs, close around their eyes on the tops of their ears and growing into their ears, on their undersides, close to their business sections, … everywhere!

Now, combine that with their small size to add to the challenge.  Shearing handpieces and combs are designed to efficiently shear large swaths of wool from full-size sheep, and they are great at that.  Babydolls are about ½ - 2/3 of a full-size breed in weight, height, length, and anatomical structure.  In short (😊), the tools don’t fit well in the tight spaces.  To keep from nicking the animal while still getting the wool off, speed goes down and concentration goes up.  Like Ed says, "Slow is smooth, smooth is fast."

 

This worked well, and the only hazards were to one little ewe and to one of my fingers.  The ewe got a poke mark on the top of her head, and I had a poke into my left social finger.  Again, the wonder of lanolin came through.  I continued shearing without bandaging my wound, and the blood flow soon stopped, and the lanolin kept getting refreshed on it with every new grip I took on the ewes.  By the time we got done the only way I could tell I got poked was the bit of tenderness near my fingertip.  When we were finished shearing and the sheep were back out in the pasture, anyone would be hard-pressed to find a nick anywhere.

These sheep also got a pedicure, with their hooves getting trimmed back to a normal length and shape, and these animals were all in good shape.  No infected looking/smelling areas, and very minimal overgrowth.  You know how one of your toenails sometimes can get a little long just because it’s not rubbing against anything, so it just looks a bit out-of-place?  That’s about all I saw today, so these sheep spend a fair amount of time on hard, rocky spots, like a driveway or graveled site, and their hooves looked great.

One other thing that always amazes me is sun-bleaching.  If you look at the pictures of the Suffolk ewe, the wool down at her skin is gun-metal gray, but out at the tips she’s milk-chocolate brown to latte-tan.  That’s the effects of the sun over one year.  I see it so often on “black” sheep I shear that I almost forget about it until I see the tan peeling away leaving black, gray, or spotted wool down at the skin.

  

One quick pitch before I close this out:  The annual Georgia Sheep and Wool Growers Association meeting is coming up in May.  Details can be found at:  https://gasheepandwool.org/event-6041186

C-Ya!

*** No animals were harmed in the making of this post. Shearing is an important part of sheep farming for the wellbeing of the sheep. ***