Don't Fleece Yourself Out of a Great Fleece
By Nadine Chounet
•Know your breed. What type of fleece should it produce? Are your fleeces within those breed standards? Does your Romney look like a Romney? Or a poodle? The hand spinning market is a discerning bunch of buyers – when they want a certain breed of fleece, you can be sure they come armed with the knowledge of what type of fleece should be coming off of that breed of animal.
•Feed appropriately for your breed to produce the best fleece possible. Also be sure to take care of any medical issues, even routine ones that can affect your fleeces, such as worming and shots.
•Keep those fleeces as clean as possible. We all know that sheep are animals and, as such, those fleeces will not be perfectly clean – but feeding practices and general cleanliness of pens makes a huge difference in your fleeces. Some well-planned and regular picking off of your sheep also goes a long way toward a clean fleece.
•Am I going to blanket my animals? You will have to decide if you can keep up with the work of blanketing and whether or not your type of fleeces can tolerate a blanket. Remember, if you blanket you will have “squared off” tips on your fleeces – but you will also have dead clean ones. The blankets also prevent sunburn – so that gray Romney will be gray to the tips, rather than sun browned. It is all a matter of taste, and buyers look for both types.
•When you shear, skirt your fleece as soon as possible. If you have a large flock, rough skirt it (remove all the manure tags and worst areas of the fleece) and then store it appropriately to get its final skirting later. Make certain that your buyers are getting a nice usable fleece and not things that should have been placed in the compost pile. A pound of skirtings taken off could come back to you twofold in sales volume. Another idea is to keep the best of the skirtings separate but with the original fleece. When a buyer takes the fleece, offer them the britches for free.
•Store your fleeces appropriately. Keep them where they will not be contaminated by moths, rodents or other creepy-crawly things. Do not store them airtight as they will suffer with that treatment – a clear plastic garbage bag is fine to show off your fleeces, but is not the best for long-term storage. Try rolling them in an old bed sheet. Enjoy your fleeces and the work that it takes to create a truly great one.
I hope to see you at the 36th Sheep & Wool Festival – May 12 and 13, 2012 at its new loaction at the Deerfield, NH Fair Grounds.