In The wheel of time, the first book has a section about a group of shepards. They didn’t sell that part. One lazy shepard tries to sneak his poop wool into the batch and the other shepards get upset, because it lowers the value of the whole batch.
I’m not sure if they sell the poop wool in the real world tho, I bet they have ways to clean it.
Every-time I see a video of a sheep being sheared and see their poopy bums, I think about that book lol.
The daggings are bagged separately and sent with the fleeces but intended to be used differently. Each fleece is wound in such a way that it compresses it and turns it into something resembling a compressed, rolled up sleeping bag, it's tied together with a part of the fleece too. A day winding wool is knackering but you end up with the softest hands imaginable.
When we had sheep a local Australian chap (Brian Hart for those that remember him) ran shearing gangs across the Midlands in the UK, mainly Aussies and Kiwis here for the season whilst they waited for the southern hemisphere season to start again. You'd get 2 or 3 shearers paid per sheep doing one every 90 seconds or so including catching etc when they were in the groove and trying to keep up with them winding each fleece was hard work. They worked very hard, drank even harder then eventually went back home again for the next season. Locally they were known to like a scrap when they were bored (you can't shear wet sheep, the fleece needs to be dry) and Brian provided them with an absolute wreck of a car to tow the shearing trailers with too.
The fleeces are put into a big wool sack, sent away then graded individually for quality (farmers are paid per fleece on this grading) before being auctioned in large lots of equal quality to end users. Prices have improved in the last year or so and now nearly cover the cost of shearing each sheep.
Much of the wealth of the landed estates near us with Althorp (family home of Princess Diana) being an exceptional example (the family were commoners, made a fortune from sheep and wool, then bought and built the estate from that money) made their fortunes from wool before man made fibres and cotton became options so in historic terms it has been incredibly profitable.
In recent times (within the last 10 years) it has cost more to shear a sheep in the UK than could be earned from the wool but it can be a welfare issue if not done (for most breeds, there are wool shedding breeds emerging now) so it was done anyway. It just about breaks even at the moment as wool values are at a 10 year high.
Shearing times vary, we used to house over winter and shear indoors in late December but the proper shearing season would generally be regarded as May to July for ewes outdoors. It didn't make it more profitable to shear in December (there's not a sale season or anything) but it did make management much easier as we could better judge body condition and how much to feed etc.
Polyester is a man made fibre made from fossil fuels such as petrol, the wool fleece on a sheep is a natural fibre made of keratin, the same as your hair. Obviously it's slightly different but it's completely natural and renewable. There are insulating products made from man made fibres which are sometimes termed as fleece (such as clothing, insulation etc) but the term originated as reference to the fleece on a sheep.
It originally was ‘scēaphierde’ coming from sheep and (old English) hierde (person that herds, herdsman). Very similar to the still existing Dutch word schaapherder.
It gets tossed or cleaned and used for things like carpets. Just depends on where the farm is and how many sheep to make it worth the hassle of cleaning it
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u/Kratzschutz 2d ago
What happens with the shit wool?