This past week we spent a couple of days shearing our herd of sheep near Pescadero, CA. For me, it is so exciting because we finally get to see all of the wool that we and our sheep have been growing throughout the year. I like to think of this day as our harvest day because our fleece is what our sheep produce as the result of our breeding decisions, weather, feed and general animal husbandry practices.
This was a special year, in particular, because we made the decision to bring some new bloodlines of Merino sheep into our herd. Previously, our herd was predominantly made up of registered Cormo sheep with several Merino x Cormo crosses to bring some interesting colors into our herd. But every 3-5 years, it’s important to add new bloodlines. We chose to go back to Australian Bred Merino as they have fine wool sheep breeding down to a science and we believed we could get sheep with fine wool at an average 17-19 micron count but with far more fleece on each animal - maybe up to 50% more, even in the first year.
These are our hopes and goals, but Shearing Day shows us what the actual results are! Based on our visuals of the fleeces on shearing day, we are delighted with the results and believe this will be the right track for our evolving herd.
As soon as the shearer finishes getting the fleece off the sheep, the fleece is laid out on a skirting table. (The process of removing dirty, poor quality fleece is called skirting the fleece.) Several knowledgeable women go over each fleece removing the dirty, short, matted and yucky fiber.
We then grade each of the fleeces on several properties:
- Length of the staple
- Crimp of the fiber
- Color including the type of white - creamy, yellowish or bright white
- Luster or shine
We also take a sample of each sheep’s fleece to send for testing to see how fine is the fiber which is measured in microns and how consistent the fiber is which is a way of checking for coarse hair or guard hairs. These scientific results will be available about a month after we send it in. And this will inform our breeding decisions for next fall. And so the cycle continues.
Excited for the yarn to come!
- Signe
