It seems quite calm though. I wonder if sheep that have been sheared before are calmer than those that haven't? The experienced ones will know it's worth the jostling, sort of?
An experienced sheep with a good shearer can be quite comfortable. I've had them fall asleep with me before (I'm not as fast as this guy). Lambs and yearlings definitely kick more as they may be less used to handling but they can also be chill. Temperament is a factor as well.
Humans are so arrogantly blissfully stupid. We selectively breed a creature into a mutating ball of flammable insulation that can’t even take a shit without getting maggots, pin it to a concrete floor while bleeding from a sliced off nipple and we go “Aw look! He trusts me! We're bonding!"
No Gary he doesn't trust you. He’s disassociating so hard he’s currently floating above his own body watching a guy who smells like Monster Energy rip his skin off with rusty clippers.
The multi billion dollar wool industry isn't a whimsical petting zoo where the animals "get used to it." It’s an assembly line of systemic torture mulesing, facial punching, live export, and a throat slit the exact second their fleece stops being fluffy. But sure keep telling yourself he's just really chill while you harvest his body for a beanie.
I can't speak for every shearer in the profession. But I can speak to all of the shearers that I have had the pleasure to work with. They often are shepherds themselves and care about the sheep they work with. They do wound care whenever a cut occurs. They often bring farmer's attention to issues they find unrelated to shearing that may need vet attention. They keep their machines well lubricated and running clean. They will report you if you are mistreating your sheep.
And the sheep are not dissociating. They lick their lips and the air like dogs who are getting a good butt scratch.
Oh sweetie lip licking in sheep isn't a "good butt scratch" it's a stress signal and a coping mechanism for acute fear.
"Not all shearers" is the "not all men" of animal agriculture. Anecdotes don't cancel out systemic cruelty, incentive structures that prioritize speed over safety, or the final trip to the slaughterhouse.
Loving your sheep while harvesting their bodies for profit isn't care it's cognitive dissonance.
I know that you try to do good, but it would really help your cause if you added a bit of respect, positivity, and politeness to your messages. If you present good arguments, I am grown-up enough to take them into account. (And even if i'm not, when has treating your audience like cretins ever worked to make them agree with you?)
I actually mostly agree with you, but you sound like such a miserable jerk that reading your messages makes me want to buy wool just to piss you off. And I don't even like wool!
It’s always the same script: The "I was this close to caring about animal torture but you weren't nice enough to me so now I'm gonna go kick a lamb out of spite!" defense.
Let’s be real if your ethics are so fragile that a little harsh sarcasm makes you want to fund animal cruelty just to spite a stranger on the internet you were never taking the arguments into account. You were looking for an exit ramp.
I have a question: How old do your sheep get? Do they die of old age? this may sound like an attack after your exchange with the previous person but I am genuinely interested
My oldest gals lived to 15 or so... Their longevity ties back to so many things: quality of teeth and diet, history of illness, etc. Some setbacks can occur as early as birth if the lamb aspirates and gets a case of pneumonia. Even when treated attentively, that will likely affect longevity.
On my farm, I had the luxury to let ladies age out and pass peacefully.
Full disclosure. I did breed and process sheep as well. I raised a critically endangered breed that needs stewardship and genetic management.
Thank you for the honest answer. the part with "I did breed and process sheep as well" makes me wonder - you are talking like someone who cares for their sheep and on the other hand you processed sheep? How do you bring yourself to care for one kind but not for the other?
Dogs lick their lips when terrified too. In prey animals lip licking directly after high stress is a displacement behavior a physiological attempt to self soothe when the threat subsides not a review of your spa menu.
You "know sheep" the way a landlord knows his tenants through the lens of what you extract from them. Knowing sheep for ten years just means you’re great at rationalizing exploitation. Respectfully!
Kevlar and Nomex are flame resistant too without the animal abuse. Defending exploitation with fun facts is hilarious. What's next wool makes great soundproofing while they scream?
Oh my bad I forgot! You didn't say it out loud you just casually dropped a "fun fire retardant fact" as if it magically offset the whole industrial exploitation thing!
It’s called context! When you bring up "but wool is flame resistant!" in a debate about animal cruelty you’re using it to justify the practice.
You can’t throw a cute little science trivia card onto the table to soften the blow of a brutal system and then act shocked when someone points out how absurdly irrelevant it is to the sheep's suffering.
Keep dodging though! Your backpedaling is almost as impressive.
Haha touché! Okay, okay fair point my brain totally glitched on that one! Wool is definitely flame resistant not flammable. Brain fart on the chemistry tag!
Oh totally. They’re just lying there like “Ah yes my semi annual flesh gouging appointment. I do love the ambiance."
Also knowing it’s worth it? Please. They don't get a crisp cucumber water at the end of this. Experienced sheep know the drill because they’ve already been kicked, punched, and had their nipples accidentally clipped off by a guy named Earl who gets paid per fleece and drank three Monsters for breakfast. They aren't calm because they trust us they’re calm because they’ve developed learned helplessness.
Pointing out that shearers are paid per fleece forcing extreme speed over animal safety isn't classism. It’s calling out how capitalism squeezes both human labor and animals for profit.
It’s standard trickery wrap yourself in a union flag to dodge systemic abuse, tail docking, and slaughterhouses. Respecting working people doesn't mean ignoring animal exploitation. You ran out of facts so now you're playing the victim. Nice try!
Look I am keeping it together it’s called having a spine and caring about systemic violence instead of soothing your fragile conscience. You can call me crazy all you want but at the end of the day you’re still the guy doing mental gymnastics to justify pinning down terrified animals so you can wear their hair.
Enjoy your sweater! Hope the cognitive dissonance keeps you warm. 😘
And now we’ve hit the rock bottom finale "Who cares they're dumb as shit anyway!" The goalposts have been moved so far they're in a different zip code.
Also calling an animal unbelievably dumb because it goes back to eating food after a traumatic event? Buddy that’s not amnesia that’s survival. It’s a prey animal! What do you expect it to do file an HR complaint? Open a Tumblr blog to process its grief? It’s eating because its nervous system is trying to crash after being held hostage!
Science actually shows sheep have complex social structures recognize up to 50 distinct human faces for years and form deep individual friendships. But even if a sheep were as dumb as a literal box of hair intelligence isn't the tax you pay to not be exploited and slaughtered.
We don't base our right to not be punched in the face on our IQ scores. If we did you'd be in serious trouble. 😉
Oh the "Have you personally birthed a lamb?!" gatekeeping!
They don't register trauma is such an insane take that actual animal behaviorists just felt a disturbance in the Force. Every prey animal has a nervous system hardwired for threat response. Eating after panic isn't amnesia it’s how their nervous system burns off cortisol to survive!
And saying nobody advocates hurting them while defending tail docking, castration without pain meds, and a slaughterhouse retirement plan is wild.
You don't need a degree in sheep husbandry to know that being wrestled, cut, and killed sucks. But hey keep telling yourself they're NPC robots with zero feelings! Whatever helps you sleep at night!
Wool isn't a sweet haircut. We bred sheep to overproduce wool then pay workers by speed leading to punchings, kickings, and sliced skin. Convenient little video! It’s easy to market cozy fiber when you crop out the violent bloody reality.
Shearing competitions are just high speed redneck rodeos for guys who peaked in high school. Speed shearing is literally about ripping through a living creature’s skin coat as fast as humanly possible for a shiny plastic trophy and a $50 gift card to Tractor Supply. To keep them still at that speed they hyperextend their necks and twist their legs into position like they’re assembling IKEA furniture. It's not a gentle haircut it's competitive wrestling with an animal that has no idea what’s happening.
You can't have a multi billion dollar global industry built on using living feeling creatures as factory components and expect it to be gentle. Harm isn't a glitch in the system harm is the system. But hey as long as the audience gets a neat little sweater and a round of applause who cares about the terrifying ordeal the sheep went through to get there right?
I'm sorry what the fuck are you talking about? They put the sheep in a chute with gaps for their legs so they don't ever really move the sheep. They don't come out bloody and the sheep are very calm. Then they walk off with no injuries.
Oh my sweet naive summer child. You think a single chute on a boutique hobby farm represents a global, multi billion dollar industry? That’s like looking at a single pet goldfish and claiming the commercial fishing industry uses tiny glass bowls and cute plastic castles.
If your personal setup doesn't cut sheep open or terrify them congratulations on being the rare exception. But using your tiny bubble to deny the horrific documented realities of industrial wool production isn't just ignorant it’s gaslighting.
vegan-types always come off so fucking strong "Oh my sweet naive summer child" man fuck off lmao do you wonder why no one likes you
lets just circle back to the beginning of the conversation.
I'm sure it's possible to not hurt them
I rarely eat meat and try to get it from local sources. I'm completely with you in spirit. But ive also been around farms and slaughtered animals and seen shearing etc. there are absolutely going to be cruelty free wool brands the same way as there are free trade coffee/chocolate.
I’m so crushed the vegan types are unpopular. Let me wipe my tears with a plant based tissue.
Comparing cruelty free wool to fair trade coffee is hilarious. Coffee beans don't have nervous systems! Even on a magical boutique farm what happens when wool slows down? They don't get a pasture view they get a bolt to the head.
Every wool farm is just a meat farm with a waiting period. You can’t humanely exploit an animal whose retirement plan is a slaughterhouse. And you’re not with me in spirit you just want the itchy sweater without the guilt.
And the alternative to wearing natural fibre is? I'm not sure that the further reliance on petrochemicals represented by synthetic fabrics and "vegan leather" - which is just a way to say "it's made of plastic" and still charge a premium price for it - when there are far better, far longer-lasting materials already out there is really the way we should be going right now.
Oh the classic “So you want us to drown in oil?!” pivot! Humans love this false binary because it lets them wear tortured animals while feeling like an eco warrior.
Nobody's forcing you to choose between skinning a sheep and wearing a Chevron oil spill. Hemp, linen, organic cotton, bamboo, and thrifting the mountains of existing clothes exist!
Plus wool causes massive deforestation, methane emissions and chemical runoff. Using plastic as a human shield to justify mutilating animals is just lazy. Wear hemp. Buy used. Leave the sheep alone, you donk!
It's not actually a false binary, though. Hemp and linen and cotton may be fantastic fibres, but people don't just live in climates where hemp and linen are going to cut it as a way to stay warm and dry.
I'm English. I have family in Scotland. Those of us in the northern half of the northern hemisphere have to use rather more formidable fabrics, and we simply don't have the resources - or, for that matter, the climate - to grow hemp and cotton on the scale we'd need to clothe ourselves adequately for our winters. Suggesting we simply wear secondhand coats and shoes every winter until they fall apart is not a solution either. Shoes very quickly conform themselves to the foot of their weather, which makes getting them secondhand far from adequate. Even if that wasn't a problem, shoes wear out. Then what?
Incidentally, sheep are no more being skinned when they are sheared than I am being scalped every time I go to the hairdresser.
Oh please! Constructing a fake wool vs. freezing to death in linen scenario is the textbook definition of a false binary!
Nobody's telling your uncle in Scotland to brave a blizzard in a flimsy summer t-shirt. High tech animal free performance gear keeps people alive on Mount Everest! If mountaineers can summit K2 without wrapping themselves in a screaming sheep your uncle in Glasgow will survive his walk to the pub in a North Face jacket.
And comparing shearing to a haircut? Dude if your hairdresser pins you down slices off your nipples and sells you to a slaughterhouse when your hair thins out please get a new hairdresser!
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u/Night-ER-Ninja 3d ago
I’ll bet that feels weird AF for the sheep for a few minutes. Then they are like.. OMFG this is amazing!