First this lambing for us started as a nightmare with the heavy rain and snow causing us to try and find places to put the lambs that were coming thick and fast. Then we had the usual awkward sods who didn't like their lambs and the ones who like someone elses till they had their own. We then had one that was in too good nick and so couldn't be bothered to check where it laid.

Now where other years we wished that they were in a little better condition this year they are too good and now we have to keep pushing them upright as the keep getting mislaid and I don't mean just one or two a day about 5 to 10 a day. It has even got my dad going through his annual perhaps we should go in to one of the hair sheep or woolless breeds instead especially with the price of wool and the cost of shearing in that last year it cost is £1.10 I believe to have the ewes sheard the rams more and we have 650 ewes 200 ewe tegs and 20 rams and we go a cheque for just over £500 for the wool even I can tell that doesn't add up very well.

Unless i can break into the loft insulation market, i think i'll be paying the wool board to take this years wool!!!

I know one of our neighbours said that he had been told that this year to put his wool on the dung heap as it isn't even worth the fuel to take it in. How true it is I don't know as I would have thought that as long as you get more for it than the cost of taking it in you'll still get a bit back on the cost of the shearing. Perhaps we could sell the wool as a new kind of soft flooring for playgrounds etc as you could pour some rubber over it to bind it together a bit more but with the added wool its wouldn't need as much rubber.

         It looks as if it is now time to cash in on the Carbon Footprint Fashion or the high cost of fuel and put a plan to the nation. I have an idea, - well, perhaps more a pie in the sky at this stage.

         We do not have rules and regulations in our house but I often advised the kids that, if it gets a bit cold, we should put on a pullover first, then turn up the central heating only if it is still cold. This is what people did long ago; they didn't have central heating they wore waistcoats, jackets or gowns in the house to keep warm. Now-a-days everyone goes around the house in shirtsleeves and pumps up the heat to keep warm! Think of the money and energy they would save if they wore a pullover.

          I am not a sheep farmer but I am sure the wool trade and Dept. of Energy could come up with a catchy phrase like "Ware a woolly jumper" or something and get the population of Britain to keep warm save fuel and reduce their Carbon Footprint (It doesn't matter if you believe in Carbon Footprinting or not) and most importantly of all - save fuel bills! by wearing a woollen pullover.

          The next thing to get over is how much warmer, (or cooler), less sweaty, and more comfortable a woollen pullover is compared with an acrylic one - wool breaths -. Surely the Government would help promote this fuel saving and cost saving common sense way to dress indoors. If it took off it would do wonders for the wool trade.

Ally - I like it.  The only snag is that to keep the costs down so that real wool woollies could match high street price expectations, they would have to be made in China.  Still we could just forget the carbon footprint of the shipping, or claim it was all transported on sailing clippers!

Do not despair, if you have white wool it will more than pay for shearing this year.

For the majority of producers it will be around 3 - 4 times more than last year, even Welsh wool will be nearly 40p and best Cheviots will be almost 60p a kilo.

It has taken a while to get value back, but the many disease outbreaks that we have had has been disastrous for exports. The price still needs to be better, and there is a good chance it will stay better as the amount of wool in the World decreases and Oil prices rise.

Sounds promising! I'm still trying to pin down my shearer - he's like a greased piglet! Our lot were done on 21st april last year, they're sitting around panting like good'uns in this slightly warmer weather.

Well I don't know about wool as we haven't had the sheep for a couple of years now, but mohair prices have stagnated over the last couple of years, although still above cost of production/shearing.  We're marketing most of our own now, which is more work but the best way of upping your return if you can get it right.

BTW: I understood with the new waste management rules and all the other rubbish we get it's now verboten to chuck wool on the muck heap.  One of the angora keepers got told off by the farm inspector for chucking their daggings on the muckheap.  Perhaps a case of over-zealotry?

As for getting hold of shearers ... (I now do some of my own; a decent enough job but I'm so much slower than the pros.)

I had a phone call last week from the chap who has done our shearing for the last five years. He was always very good at contacting all his customers to check they still had sheep and wanted him to shear this year, not quite so reliable in pinning him down to a day though!  His message this year was not so helpful - his back trouble means he is giving up and his partner has gone off to the States to work on combines.  Not to worry though, someone is taking over his customers  - do I want my name and number included on the list?  Hopefully it will work out, but all I  have is the new guy's name - no contact details!

With two shearers working at full pelt, I am fully occupied in feeding sheep into them and Mrs J and her 86 year old father barely have time to just clear away the fleeces.  There is no time to roll them and in any case we have nowhere suitable to store full wool sheets for collection.  Some of our neighbours take their wool in to the BWMB depot in Bromyard, but as the cost of diesel would be more than we would get for the wool, I can't see the point.  We select out the best teg fleeces to sell to home spinners and every few years have some spun to sell as knitting wool.  The rest go on the muck heap.  As you say Townie, this is probably illegal, but what is the difference between wool shorn off and that scraped off on fences etc?

A couple of years ago one of our vets had to clip off some fleece to get at a vein.  He commented, as he dropped it to the floor, that strictly speaking, fleece removed by a vet was classified as hazardous clinical waste and should be taken back to the surgery for proper disposal.  A medical friend confirmed that if she had to clip human hair to get at a wound, the same applied.  I wonder how hairdressers are supposed to dispose of their floor sweepings?

Jacobus:

I wonder how hairdressers are supposed to dispose of their floor sweepings?

My Barber in Ledbury, yes a Barber not a hairdresser, said he had a visit from some oink wanting to know why he hadn't bought any special bags from the Council to dispose of his hazardous waste. He told the callow youth to, "bugger off" and hasn't yet heard back.

We were inspecting our Wiltshire Horn shearlings tonight and OH was idly pulling out loose bits of winter fleece they were shedding and dropping them in the field. I reminded her that she was handling a hazardous waste product. Strangely enough her reply to this was the same as Peter's barber.

We don't have too much trouble pinning ours down due to the fact we can bring the tegs, rams and half the ewes in to the sheds over night so he usually rings us up quiet early as he can clip ours when its raining and can't do someone elses 

When we have the two people shearing my dad usually gets the sheep in and then I usually put the work pen and spilt the lambs off and then change stitch up the wool sheets and I can reasonably keep up and they have usually finished the 600 sheep in 2 days finishing at 5 to 6pm and usually just take a morning a week or something before they do the main lot to shear the tegs and rams. Then as we are only about 40mins by tractor away from our wool depot we take the 40 to 50 bags in on the trailer.

Although that wasn't as nice last year as the county council decided to stuff the ring road up by making it two way we where it use to flow really we other than when they had half the lanes closed to do building work and even then it still worked better. Mind you it could have been worse it could have been rush hour as we just got a call from my brother to ask if we had seen anything on the news about an accident on junction 10 on the M20 as he was still stuck there he had already been there an hour and a half and he is still not back yet so he must still be stuck there so that'll make it two hours. He was jumping for joy when they moved a whole three metres.

Although even with that news on the wool price I don't think my dad will cheer up much as they had gone in today to see about getting a new carpet for the stairs and he was thinking of getting a harrow/scarifier to clear some of the moss and mole hills but mainly to go over the fields before sowing some fresh gass and clover seed on the poor pastures to save having the cultivated but the price put him off.

crazysheep:

Unless i can break into the loft insulation market, i think i'll be paying the wool board to take this years wool!!!

I've just insulated the new house with sheeps wool insulation. After paying the bill and talking to my builder/neighbour/moonlighting sheep farmer I think there is something broken with the system. The difference between what he was paid for wool and what I paid for the sheets was huge, and didn't seem related to processing, one still had thistles stuck in it. I wonder if it would have been cheaper to just buy some sheep and somehow stick them to the walls. (For all the animal rights nutters reading this, that was a joke. Phew, think I covered myself there!)

Greyface Dartmoor wool is the traditional carpet wool. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be much of a market for it. I've just spent all evening feeding sheep into the shearer's pen, and itching all over from the shorn animals. i can't understand why there isn't a bigger market for this stuff as loft insulation.. it itches like fibreglass!