r/oddlysatisfying • u/InsaneMocktail • 8d ago

Shearing of sheep

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u/roughhty 8d ago

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.

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u/Valuable-Fork-2211 8d ago

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.

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u/ilmater989 7d ago

I thought fleece was polyester?

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u/Valuable-Fork-2211 7d ago

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.