TALKING POINT
TALKING POINT
Moans from some sheep farmers about their wool product has finally driven me to write. Recent comments by sheep vet John Vipond, on the so-called virtues of the almost wool-less Wiltshire Horn, reinforced my feeling. I thought that argument had long since been scotched. It is hardly a suitable breed to replace hill breeds, the source of most of the UK clip; the poor things would get too cold.
Why reject opportunity to increase income from sheep? Certainly, the habits and choices of sheep rearers need examination – and I refer solely to their business choices. Given current challenges to their income, there is every reason to consider other income-earning potential of sheep.
Few farmers appear to appreciate the heritable nature of wool quality and wool weight. If you mate two differently fleeced sheep, the lamb will produce qualities and fleece weights mid-way between the two. So the three-tier stratified meat production system, which since the 1970s has supplied the main volume of meat lambs to mass retail, represents the vehicle by which the wool product can be improved and exploited.
Producers should consider the opportunities better woolled animals offer. Its possible, for example, to use white-faced and white-legged sheep on our hills and mountains. These also offer valuable pedigree markets. Cheviot and Welsh Mountain breeds have been used in this way for generations.
If farmers are determined to retain a black-faced breed, and they are pretty, they can ensure no transference of black fibre into the main fleece area.
Why should the wool textile industry pay for a low-quality product? It is poorly presented, coarse, full of kemp and black fibre, and often contaminated with paint and dyestuffs that are apparently able to fool sheep breeders into purchasing dyed flocks, because the phenotypic appearance is made to seem similar.
Most of the UK clip has slipped into a carpet wool category since the early 1970s while the sheep producing sector had a party on the back of Britains EU membership and a fantastic new market for lamb. It forgot everything else in its scramble to exploit new opportunities. The decline in quality of the UK clip is traceable from then.
The carpet industry is a low-priced sector for wool fibre which does not pay much for wool. And other fibres will substitute wool fibre at certain price points. Yet even this industry requires a minimum quality level. The technical director of one of the worlds largest carpet producers told me last year that, with established demand for pale light-reflecting floor coverings, he could like me spot a black fibre at 20 paces.
Black fibre cannot be bleached, and it is difficult to dye into repeatable dark colours. Kemp fibre is itchy and represents a fire hazard to processing plant worth millions. And dyed and paint-marked wool is useless.
Dont forget there is a world wool shortage. Average price per kg on world markets has risen, now that the Australian wool overhang has gone. But the valuable markets are associated with clothing and fashion – achievable only by 5% of UK production.
That was not the case in the 60s, before the meat bonanza. Then, even in Swaledale, home of the hairy black-faced hill breed, it was unusual to find animals with any trace of black in the fleecewool. Black-woolled lambs were hidden by their embarrassed owners.
Shame, John Vipond, on your apparently low business drive. If you want to know how to make money from wool, you only have to ask.
Money can be made
from wool, you just
have to do the job
right, says
Ann Walker
• Ann Walker has worked in a senior strategic role within the textile industry for a number of years. Her original research in wool production received an international award and Ann continues to study links between wool production and the textile industry. Ann has also responded to the minister on behalf of the British Wool Marketing Board with several surveys.