Well I did my first try at hand shearing today. I did it all with scissors. I did my angora buck Rufus because I knew his fiber was going to be of little value because of all the VM (hay and debris) in it. And he is the wildest one of the what I have left to do. Here are a couple before pictures.
And an hour later here is the results.
I was very happy with the results! And if the fleece had not been so full of VM it would have been really nice. I can see huge advantages of doing it with scissors. It will be so easy to do most the the skirting as you are shearing. The extra time it takes to hand shear is less time it will take to skirt it and get it ready to sell or process. And for those that don't know, skirting is where you pick though a fleece that has come off the animal and you get rid of all hay, dirt, manure, and short pieces of fleece.
Now I have four shetland sheep to do and one merino sheep. Don't think I will get to them all today!
Great job! I'm really considering trying my hand at scissors next year. Did you find the online class you took helpful?
ReplyDeleteI've done one of my sheep with scissors, and was also surprised with how well it turned out.
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