Bad Hair Cut

I sheared my first sheep today with the help of many people.

A new friend who had two babydoll sheep now has four as her supposed infertile male, Bobby, is apparently not infertile. They did not know that the ewe, Emma, was expecting and were rather surprised one day to see two little lambs in the pen.

The twins (one black and one white) are now two weeks old and just a cute as all get out.

But my friend and her husband have come to realize that these sheep are quite a bit bigger than they thought and know that the fenced part of the pasture they thought was large enough really isn't so they are selling all four of them with a top dollar set of electric shears for just $1200. Included in that price are the two fleeces from Emma and Bobby.

Now, as to the quality of that fleece I can speak with intimate knowledge. It is soft, has a lovely hand and while it has some lanolin is not overly greasy and washes up nicely. It does have more VM it than it should as we forgot to put down a tarp on which to work.

The reason I know this is because I went over this morning to help with the shearing. I was a helper in the shearing of Larry and Curly the lincolns from last fall. I sort of figured that I would be doing similar help by holding a couple of legs or putting fleece into bags or such. But, as we got started (none of us has previously handled electric shears) and poor Bobby got nicked and started to bleed, his owner did not have the heart to proceed for fear of hurting him further.

Me, being the bossy sort, just moved in and took over the clippers and buzzed my way along. It took an hour and a half. The fleece is a mess and is probably good only for felting (well, parts of it are going to spin nicely, but you will have to pick out the billions of second cuts.). Bobby was nicked about four or five times all told.

And when the deed was done we could nothing but laugh at the poor fellow for I really did a hack job. I completely missed one hind leg.



We were all completely exhausted and decided our best bet was to come back and deal with Emma on another day. So we have set Thursday after work as round two in this saga.

But here are pictures. The full fleeced sheep is Emma is at the top and you can see the black lamb catching a quick snack. The other pictures are of poor Bobby. I love the one in which Ed is petting him for he is looking at me like he's afraid I will come at him again... but doesn't he look cute? He looks all the world like a large sheep dog and not a sheep himself.