Sheep Shearing 🐑✂️
The tales of our annual sheep shearing experiences
Hiya, farm friends 👋🏼
It’s me again 🙃
Bringing you a fresh update from your (favorite?) Lincoln mini goat farm!
This week, we are going to tell you all about Shearing day ✂️✂️✂️✂️
Our first experience shearing sheep 🫣
We got our first two ewe lambs on a sunny Saturday in June 2021.
Our friend Tracy breeds Babydoll Southdown Sheep in Merna, NE as well as Nigerian Dwarf Goats.
(Thanks to Tracy, we started both our sheep and goat herds that summer!)
👆🏼As you can see above, these sheep are not only super cute, but also have wool on every single inch of their little bodies (head, legs and all!).
To the brand new sheep farmers looking to tackle shearing for the first time - that is quite the challenge!
But, being who we are, Jeff and I decided that we were “ALL IN” and wanted to try everything ourselves before ever considering outsourcing.
How We Prepared
All it took was a couple informative youtube videos to boost our confidence.
3 minutes per sheep?
Sounds reasonable.
Get it all cut off in one piece?
CHALLENGE ACCEPTED.
Next Step: we did some research on equipment and spent about $200 on a brand new pair of electric shears, and just decided to go for it.
We’ve got this!!
Right…?
Boy, were we in for a TREAT! 😅
First of all, these were two 6 month old girls who weighed in at maybe 60 lbs each against a full grown man and wife who are #inItToWinIt.
What could go wrong?
Well, a couple solid belly laughs from this onlooking wife 👀 while watching the whole debacle, sweaty armpits and some hurt pride from Jeff, and 2 whole hours later - the sheep WERE sheared.
But was it pretty?
NAH.
As he was catching his breath from wrestling with the four legged ones while wielding a sharp utensil, I smartly commented “they look like peeled potatoes”.
Happy “peeled potatoes” at least!
After Shearing day 2021, we decided that maybe wool sheep were not for us (haha!).
A little more research and we stumbled upon various breeds of hair sheep (which grow hair like goats and shed naturally - so no shearing necessary!) and in 2022 we began raising American Blackbelly Sheep and have literally never looked back.
But, we still have 2 wool sheep on the farm so we ultimately found someone based out of Surprise, NE who will shear them for us!
Rather than taking 2+ hours of our time, a loss of dignity, plus a sore body for a week - we just drive to Surprise and these 2 get sheared in under 10 minutes.
Just for funzies, here’s a quick before and after of Joy the Cheviot, and Zeke the Shetland sheep.
But guess what!?
The sheep weren’t the only ones who got sheared for 2024!
Jeff also took part in his own annual shearing day 🤩
Quite a drastic change for all 3, wouldn’t you say?
Let us know if you’re scheduled for your own shearing, or have any before/after transformations you’d like to share!
We have shedding sheep, Australian Whites (Dorpers are also popular). But I think we were sold duds. Only 2 out of 6 really shed well and we've had to try and shear with hand shears - kitchen scissors were better, and less dangerous.