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Its time to shear at our farm. Sheep grow wool all year long. Once a year, a man comes to our farm to shear off the wool from all the sheep. Here are some pictures.
The shearer uses electric shears to quickly
remove all of the wool from the sheep. He has to
hold the sheep because the sheep does not want to
be sheared. But if sheep are not sheared, they will
get very hot during the summer. The wool from one sheep is called a fleece. A
fleece from one sheep usually weighs 8 to 12
pounds. The sheep farmer removes dirty places from the
wool. Here is a beautiful gray fleece. It is very
soft. Someone will buy it. They will then wash it
carefully and spin yarn from it. Then it might make
a nice sweater. Here is a bag with the fleece from one white
sheep. It weighed 8 pounds. The wool looks creamy
color because of oil in the wool. The wool from this sheep was more than four
inches long. The waves that you can see are called
crimp. This lets wool stretch. A ten pound black fleece. This black wool was 4 inches long. A modern bag of wool holds nearly 200 pounds of
wool. The fleeces sheared from many sheep are
packed into this bag that is bigger than the
farmer.
