Adventures with YarnInformation about everything to do with yarn, knitting, fiber arts, sheep…

I’ve only had my Happy Panda Rainbow Farm for a month and already I have a wonderful yarn adventure to share with you!

We’ve been having unusually warm weather here in Ontario, so I decided to take advantage of it and shear my Shetland ram, Franklin:

I think he’s such a sweetheart… but only when I’m not in the pen with him. If I’m in there, he tends to want to show me who he thinks is boss. Luckily there’s been no people ramming yet. Once I learn more about his behaviour I’ll be posting an entry about rams in detail.

But for now, the shearing!

I used a set of metal blades, also known as the old fashioned method. With only four sheep I figured it wouldn’t be so bad, plus they’re at least one tenth the price of electric shears. Tom was there to help distract Franklin with grain and hay, and then hold onto him when Franklin showed no more interest in food.

I don’t know how long we took to do it, but it was probably closer to an hour and a half. Considering it was my first time shearing, plus we had to stop every fifteen minutes to stretch, I wouldn’t say it went so bad. Since his fleece is easily the worst quality of them all, it was good to practice on him before I do the ladies. Also, we sheared him while he was standing up, I was not going to manipulate a ram like you see the New Zealand shearers do ewes, not with those bad horns of his!

Enough words, here’s a picture of my marvelous first time shearing result.

Oh poor Franklin, yeah you don’t look so suave, but it’ll grow out in a few weeks! Everyone gets a bad haircut sometimes… On the plus side there were no injuries had by sheep or human. I’m sure he appreciates that over looking fancy and pretty. But it sure is different from this before shot:

Now when I enter the barn and Franklin comes running up, I can’t help but laugh. He looks so silly and naked! Frankie, we see your shame!

Here he is with his girls. You can see I stopped at his butt, he was getting really tired of the shearing so we decided to finish up a later day. Same with his lower trimming.

As for the result, here are the very dirty raw fleece bits. I was aiming for the full one piece fleece, but since he dragged it around when we took breaks I chose to break it off. I’ll try to weigh it after I’ve sheared his butt and removed the tags. I’m very glad to be making progress on my goal of raising sheep and using their fiber, even if technically this fiber was “created” by the previous shepherd. Once I get it washed, combing it down by the wood fire will make for a great end of day activity.

Everyone, meet Riker! Riker is my first official fiber animal joining the farm (hence his name, as he’s Number One, and so is William T. Riker). He’s an English angora buck who’s been described as a lilac cream tort. His fibers will pair wonderfully with my Shetland sheep fleece to produce a wonderful Angora-Shetland blend of yarn… but not for at least 3 months as he was just sheared.

He is currently living in a “Rabbit starter cage” bought from Petsmart, he seems to be happy and relaxed and has a healthy appetite and poop production. I’m looking into the best diet for him and our future farm lifestyle. I’ve seen two different approaches so far, one which advocates mostly pellets with a bit of hay and veggies, the other which advocates mostly hay with a quarter the amount of pellets and much more fresh food. Right now I’m feeding him the same diet he had in his older home, pellets with a bit of hay and veggies. Once we get into growing season I might play around with the veggie/hay/pellet ratios, gradually of course!

I bought a wire comb meant for little dogs to comb his fiber with, and it worked wonderfully. He just sat right down with us on the couch while we combed him and pet him. No poop or pee mishaps with us so far. He’s such a champion! We are very happy to have him on the farm, and I’m now thinking much more seriously about raising Angoras sooner rather than later.