Shearing Day at Apple Creek Merinos

Shearing day for a flock that is focused on producing high-quality fleeces is a big deal—arguably the most important day of the entire year. My Merino sheep are shorn once a year, so there is a lot at stake for each one of the fleeces. To ensure things run smoothly when the big day finally arrives, preparation is key; the quality of fleeces you get on shearing day is dependent on the entire previous year’s work by you and the sheep. Since next year’s fleece potential starts as soon as the freshly shorn sheep stands up off the shearing board, preparation for your next shearing day starts right then, too.

The morning of shearing day. Sheep were closed inside and fasted overnight to ensure they are dry and “empty” for shearing safety (Banana, wearing yellow, in front). Laurel keeps her sheep coated year-round.

Food and Finery Through the Year

My main line of defense for ensuring fleece quality is that I keep my sheep coated year-round. The biggest reason for coating is to keep vegetable matter out of the fleeces, but it also reduces sun bleaching and weathering of the tips, as well as reducing dirt accumulation on the outside of the fleece. This results in a fleece that is exceptionally clean and high-yielding for my handspinner and fiber-artist clients. The reward for coating your sheep is high, but there are also risks involved. If a coat gets too tight, it can cause felting, but loose coats are a recipe for tangled sheep. As a result, I am constantly evaluating the fit of each coat in the entire flock and swapping them out as needed. Adult sheep go through about four coat sizes per year, while lambs—whose bodies and fleeces are both growing—must be changed out more often.

Another critical aspect of maintaining fleece quality throughout the entire year is nutrition. Wool fiber is a protein, so each sheep needs enough daily protein intake for her body’s metabolism as well as growing that day’s length of wool. Merino sheep have about 38,000 follicles per square inch, so even though only a tiny bit of length grows each day, this adds up! Having too little protein or getting sick can lead to weak points along the length of the fiber staple, otherwise known as a dreaded “break” in the fleece. Having too much protein can increase the fiber diameter by several microns and will cause a fleece to have inconsistent crimp wavelengths when comparing along the length of the staple. When you add in the additional variable of breeding, pregnant ewes’ nutritional requirements go up significantly from the end of gestation through weaning their lambs. So my job as a fiber flock shepherdess is to always provide the correct amount of quality feed to meet their changing nutritional needs.

A yearling ewe watches shearing for the first time.

When to Shear?

Planning when to shear your sheep is another aspect of preparation for a successful shearing day. If you have pregnant ewes, then it’s best to shear about four weeks before lambing. Ewes will be more comfortable, more able to see and care for their lambs; lambs will have an easier time nursing, and the fleece will stay cleaner. I had my lambing spread across December through February this year, so I split my flock into two shearing groups based on when they were due to lamb: about two thirds in early December, and the rest in late January.

Logistics and sheep management during shearing are other critical parts of shearing prep. Sheep must be dry, which in Western Oregon this sometimes means closing them in the barn for at least a day beforehand. They also need to be fasted for an appropriate length of time based on their age and stage of gestation.

Animals should be penned close together near where your shearer is set up so that you can catch and hand them off easily. I don’t have a dedicated shearing shed, so I rearrange my barn to create holding pens and remove the bedding from the rest of the barn to make space for shearing and fleece handling.

A Collective Effort

Shearing day takes a village. I do all of the daily animal care chores by myself, but for shearing, it’s necessary to have at least a couple of willing friends whom you can put to work. There are many simultaneous support tasks: catching and un-coating the next sheep to be shorn, sweeping undesirable bits such as leg wool and second cuts from the shearing board, skirting then carefully folding and bagging fleeces as they come off, and re-coating the sheep. My shearer, Jake Valentine of Darkside Shearing, only takes about five minutes per sheep, so to keep up with him, the rest of us have to be working together efficiently and smoothly! This year I had a crew of about seven to eight people, plus myself and Jake. And everyone is busy nonstop.

As you can see, there has already been a huge amount of work put into making shearing day a success, and we haven’t even talked about the actual shearing yet! Thankfully, that step is the one I don’t need to worry about. Jake was a professional, full-time shearer for about 20 years until recently “retiring” to only shear small handspinning flocks on weekends. Shearing is extremely tough on a person’s body and is dangerous, so it’s not a profession that attracts a lot of new people. But having shearers is absolutely critical to the wool industry.

Get a closer look! Click on any image below to view it in full-screen mode.

Jake shears each sheep in the exact same pattern, moving their body around to ensure the skin is taut, using his legs to hold them in a comfortable position as he carefully takes the wool off. It almost looks like a dance, and the sheep often seem to be in a trance as they are maneuvered around the shearing board. I take notes as we work through the flock so that if an individual has a dewlap (a flap of skin on their lower neck that finewool sheep are prone to) or other shearing hazard, I can warn Jake next year. When he knows what to watch for as he shears each sheep, we can reduce the risk of accidental cuts.

Steps to Fabulous Fleece

When that precious fleece has been fully sheared, my skirting crew starts on their task. Skirting is the process of removing undesirable parts of the fleece; think belly, legs, and uncoated edges that have too much vegetable matter or are too dirty to be sold as premium fleece. Skirting is performed on a table that has slats to allow short locks and other small waste pieces to fall through while the skirters unfold the fleece and do their work. Getting the fleece up onto the skirting table in one piece and without twists is more difficult than it might sound, and sometimes it takes two sets of hands. Because they only have a few minutes for each fleece, this is a rough first-pass that essentially is intended to remove anything that is clearly not part of the prime fleece. I go back and carefully pick over each fleece when time is not an issue (I'll share more about that with you another day).

Click on any image below to view it in full-screen mode.

Finally, the fleece is rolled in a particular way with tissue paper between layers to help me unroll it again later. This isn’t necessary for all breeds, but the folded layers of Merino fleeces can stick to each other, which makes unrolling later much more difficult. Each fleece goes into its own clear plastic bag with a slip of paper that notes the animal name and shearing date. While waiting to be finalized and shipped to their buyers, I store the fleeces in my house so that their temperature and humidity can be controlled.

While the fleece is being handled by others, I am pulling the coat off of the next sheep to be shorn and moving her out of the holding pen. After her shearing is done, she is handed to one of my veteran helpers who puts a new coat back on (smaller because she has just lost about 8 inches of body diameter), and the process repeats. By the end of the day, Jake has expended about as many calories as it would take to run a marathon, and even though I am exhausted too, it’s a very exciting time—my house is full of bags of beautiful wool the flock and I have worked so hard for all year!

The final product of shearing day!

Follow the flock at @applecreekmerinos on Instagram and Facebook for lots more photos and information.