Welcome to the Sheep Barn

Come with me into the sheep barn and meet some of the animals who grow the wool we all love. As enjoyable as the crush of the festival is outside the barn, I like to take time out and visit our suppliers. Even when there’s a crowd here in the aisles between the pens, the sheep barn is usually calm and centering. At this particular (imaginary) festival, the organizers have arranged the pens by wool type, which is handy for us as we make sense of the many varieties of wool. Each time someone organizes sheep breeds, the groups form differently, depending on the criteria being used to sort them. Today we have clusters based on the fiber qualities.

Fine Wools

Let’s begin in this aisle with the fine wools. One of these breeds—Merino —is familiar to almost everyone who has even a basic knowledge of sheep varieties, and the wools have a lot of appeal to most fiber workers. The fine wools are suitable for making next-to-skin garments; they’re soft. What they are not is durable; it’s a trade-off.

There are many types of Merino sheep. Having originated in Spain, the breed spread across the globe and adapted to different environments and local needs. Many of the feral island flocks include strong Merino components. Fine-wool sheep have many wool follicles per square inch of skin, and some Merino strains were bred to have wrinkled skin (think Chinese Shar-Pei dog) to increase the wool yield. Due to difficulties in shearing, the smoother-skinned varieties have won out.

Some Merinos went to France and were bred to produce a slightly different type of sheep, the Rambouillet. Later this became a successful range sheep in the western United States. Rambouillet wool is a bit bouncier than Merino. Another fine-wool range sheep, this one developed within the United States, is the Targhee.