Sheep Shearing Day
- Laura Wayte
- Aug 22
- 4 min read
A casual observer might say that raising sheep seems much less labor intensive than chicken, pig or cow farming is. There they are in their field, happily eating their whole diet from the grass and walking around with thick fuzzy houses on their backs, impervious to wind, rain and cold.
And their natural habits make them useful in sustainable agriculture, which means the sheep get to live their best lives, and we thank them for it. Many of those sheep we see along I-5 in Oregon are helping grass-seed farmers by trimming their fields and enriching the soil. Here on the farm, they get brought up to the house to trim the rich, spring lawn!
Except it isn't completely hands-off. Raising them also requires a lot of care. For instance, we spent energy this spring regularly checking on the lambing process and collecting the newborns whose mamas had rejected them. Those lambs were raised by hand on the farm, and are still there keeping the brush trimmed (with the help of some goats).
Also, sheep feet need trimming since walking on lush, green fields all day does not wear down the growth.
But most of all, their thick wool coats that make them so self-sufficient in the winter and spring, are a liability in August and September and must be shorn off.
So, on July 31st this year we did the annual shearing and hoof trimming day. We had all hands on deck, with eight interns helping out our grazing team and the professional shearers. We herded the sheep up to the main barn and then got them through the process with as little stress as possible.
"We were able to get 65 ewes and our 3 rams sheared in around an hour and a half," said farm student Kara Spell. "We (students) mainly worked to push the sheep into the chute and up the ramp to the shearing truck, as well as bagging up the shorn wool."
The shearing professionals were efficient, our students learned calming handling practices and how to trim feet, and the sheep were turned out into the high summer heat wearing much more comfortable outfits.
The shearing is done by Mike Cowdrey. Mike, who is a vice president of the Oregon Sheep Growers Association, has been coming to Deck for years and is part of a three-generation family in the business of sheep shearing. They have specialized trailers, very fast clippers and strong backs! One person handles each sheep and has a personalized technique of safely holding and clipping the animals. The most important thing is to keep the process quick and calm.
"Animals don't want to be handled," said Christine Deck. "One thing we do is we push them in tight bunches, which sounds bad but is actually helpful. Animals like to be in closed spaces when they are being handled. If you put two sheep in a 10 x 10 foot enclosure and try to handle them they are going to freak and run all over. But if you put 20 in there they'll be very calm because they are up against each other and they just feel more security. We speak gently, we move slowly and we treat them with respect and make it as gentle and quick as we can."
You can read more about the shearing process in this excellent article about Mike's son, Cody Cowdrey.
You might wonder what happens to the wool. Well, unfortunately, not much. There is virtually no market for wool currently, so we compost our harvest.
This is, obviously, quite unfortunate. It feels wasteful and it prevents us from recouping our costs. There are a lot of sheep in Oregon and farmers would love to have a secondary way to make money by selling the wool. But Christine Deck says that isn't possible today for a number of reasons.
One important aspect is that wool clothing and blankets are no longer appreciated by consumers who are used to products made with plastic-based fabric. Our culture has lost the knack for enjoying and caring for wool products, so for now that market is not thriving.
But the other reason has to do with regulations around producing the wool yarn. It takes a lot of water to wash the wool and that waste water is limited by government regulations that aim to protect the environment.
"Stringent environmental laws are helpful for the environment, but if you're just going to buy the same stuff produced off shore with probably poorer standards, because there's even less oversight, I'm not sure the overall benefit is there," Christine said. "It's a NIMBY mindset. I'll go ahead and buy leather goods and wool (produced over seas) and I'm also going to vote that we have these super high environmental standards in my back yard, but I don't care what's going on in Asia. They can do whatever they want."
But this is a shortsighted approach, she said. "We're all in the same greenhouse, so to speak."
Christine continued: "Previously we were able to sell it to Columbia Scouring Mill. They were buying it for what it cost us to shear it. It was break-even. But now, for the last three years, we pay to have them sheared and can't sell it back so we are just composting it in our compost pile."
While at the Junction City Scandinavian Fest we met Stephanie Schiffgens of Appletree Farm outside of Eugene who is trying to create a wool market for her farm. She was selling many products in her Scandi Fest booth made from wool from her Gotland sheep and she's always trying to develop new products.
"This breed of sheep that I started raising 14 years ago is my "no waste" breed of sheep. I'm able to use everything," says Stephanie. "I raise them primarily for breeding stock so we can grow the breed. It is not a native breed to this country so we are in an up-breeding program."
She shears her small flock twice per year and then sells the wool for various purposes, as well as selling meat and pelts. At Scandi Fest she was selling a new saddle blanket that she's trying to develop for equestrian use. The wool that isn't of good enough quality for knitting or felting products, she uses as a nitrogen-rich mulch in her garden.
"All these products that I develop they help make this little flock profitable," she said.
