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.