And ya know what? Iâm passionate about this kind of stuff, and I adore sheep, so buckle up, weâre talking about wool. Humans through history have bred modern sheep to have this impossibly thick wool coat that can become moldy and fly infested and gross and heavy and locked up if they arenât sheared. They can overheat and die if not shorn. Theyâll get maggots, as stated above. They will become nearly immobile and more susceptible to predator attacks because they canât run away or even really move. So whatâs the âhumaneâ solution here? To castrate all sheep and let them die off as a species while individually rotting and overheating and dying under their unshorn coats? Or to take care of the animals our species bred and use the wool that has to come off for the sheepâs health because otherwise itâs just sitting around?
Not to mention how amazing a fiber wool is! Itâs one of the few (if not the only, I canât recall currently) natural materials that will still keep you warm even when wet (which is why sheep donât need barns, necessarily). Itâs naturally water resistant, too, and that can be upped by simple treatment with waxes or oils. Itâs very sturdy, lasts a long time, somewhat cut-resistant, and moderately flame resistant. (Plastic based yarns like the above will burn and melt quickly, adhering to your skin and making the burns worse.) And sheep produce a lot of this amazing stuff for not a ton of input. Sheep are happy grazing and donât need special food to still make their wool (unlike cows that need a specific diet to make tasty milk), so as long as you keep them safe theyâre pretty much going to just munch whatever they can and grow their amazing fluff.
Thereâs a reason our ancestors in sheep country relied on wool over plant fibers like cotton and flax. Sure, they have their place, but wool is super sturdy, warm, easily renewable, doesnât require very specific growing conditions (just a healthy sheep), and one fleece will give you a crapton of fiber to spin. And you arenât hurting an animal to do it, youâre just giving them the required haircut! Nobody would advocate that you never get a cocker spainel groomed because it might stress the animal, or they might get nicked in the haircut process. Your spaniel will get nasty and matted if you donât treat its coat correctly, and that is much worse than the momentary stress of a surface nick or a grooming salon. Sheep arenât harmed or even that stressed by the shearing process.
I know it can look very scary to see a sheep being picked up and moved around while someone holds big scissors or a giant hair razor, but itâs not that bad for the sheep. They just kind of sit there and go âOh, time for haircut, ok, can eat after?â And the person shearing isnât in it to hurt the sheep. Why would you want to harm the animals you rely on for a living, at the bare minimum? And even if they do get nicked, itâs not really different from you getting a nick while shaving, except that sheep naturally secrete lanolin, which soothes skin irritation and has some mild antibacterial properties. So their little nicks and scrapes, even if they bleed and it looks scary on their white peach fuzz, donât hurt that bad and heal up super quickly. And for those who are worried about the sheep being cold without their woolâshearing is done in spring/summer, not winter. So the sheep are nice and cool for the hot weather, and theyâve grown back their coats by the time itâs getting cold again. Any sheep shorn in winter are kept in warm, indoor barns with the climate carefully controlled. But because sheep prefer to wander and graze than stay inside and eat hay, most production is done as it was in ye olde days: spring shearing, overwintering in their wool, roaming the great outdoors for munchies.
And no, lambs donât get sheared. The babies donât have enough wool to make it worth it, let alone the fact that most lambs are born right after shearing time. By the time it gets around to the next shearing season, theyâre a year-old sheep and are ready to be shorn for the first time.
Iâm sorry for the infodump, I just have a lot of feelings about natural and sustainable living, and sheep are an incredible resource, not to mention incredibly adorable. I also hate misinformation. Donât be fooled, gathering wool from sheep doesnât harm the sheep, and the wool produced is amazingly useful and is far more sustainable and ecofriendly than plastic!
(Also, here is a quick video showing the shearing process on hybrid hair/wool sheep, and hereâs one showing how it was/is done with hand shears.)
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