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No one shears sheep to promote the wool any extra, explains James Edwards, a new-entrant tenant farmer with a flock of greater than 1,200 ewes. As an alternative, most individuals do it for the sheep’s sake, to get the wool off them.
After many years of wool costs that hardly cowl the price of shearing, an increasing number of farmers are seeing wool as an optionally available additional to the meat that brings within the bulk of their earnings.
A worth crash throughout the pandemic noticed farmers getting a mean worth of simply 32p a kilo for wool. In distinction, a lamb presently has a worth of about £90-£120.
That’s why an rising variety of shepherds like Edwards are turning to “wool shedders” – breeds of sheep that shed their very own wool. The Nationwide Sheep Affiliation (NSA) estimates there may very well be as many as 500,000 wool-shedding breeding ewes within the UK, out of a complete inhabitants of 14.5 million.
Edwards’s wool shedders are exlanas, a breed that has been in growth since 2008 and whose identify means “with out wool” in Latin.
The wool-shedding trait has its origins within the Wiltshire Horn, a local breed of British sheep that was predominant within the south-west county throughout the 18th century, earlier than the motion in direction of more and more woollier sheep led to a decline in its reputation.
“Wool is a man-made factor,” says Edwards. “Naturally, sheep don’t have massive woolly fleeces, as a result of there wouldn’t be anyone there to shear them. All types of early, primitive or wild sheep both shed their wool or it falls out.
“We bred them to have huge fleeces due to the wool commerce; that was nice, as a result of wool was a fibre that was extremely standard. Quick ahead to now, it’s merely not price something.”
For Edwards, wool-shedding sheep had been the one logical alternative when he got here to constructing his first flock of 100 sheep with a £10,000 financial institution mortgage.
“Once I first went into it I didn’t have any sheep. There was no residence farm, so I simply checked out what I believed made essentially the most sense economically. Wool didn’t characteristic in that.
“I’m going to wrestle to have an effect on the worth I promote a lamb for on the finish, however I can have an effect on the prices it takes me to get to the purpose of sale. By lowering the wool factor and the roles related to it, I’m lowering these prices,” says Edwards.
A sheep’s fleece has the potential to be a severe welfare problem for the animal if it’s not maintained and shorn yearly. Wool-shedding sheep are extra immune to a situation referred to as fly strike – the place an animal is eaten alive by maggots that hatch in its fleece.
“As a result of there’s no wool, they don’t get struck. That’s labour saving: I don’t must run round on a regular basis, worrying and searching for maggots in sheep. But additionally, I’m not utilizing nasty chemical compounds [to treat the animals],” says Edwards.
Although latest proof means that wool costs are starting to get better, they nonetheless don’t cowl the shearing price for many producers, based on British Wool, which is about £1.65 a sheep.
Phil Stocker, chief government of the NSA, says a wholesale swap to wool-shedding sheep can be a “actual disgrace” as a result of wool might be one of many “most sustainable fibres on this planet, rising naturally on the again of a sheep”.
Nevertheless, for Edwards, the rising development in direction of wool-shedding sheep is a mirrored image of contemporary farming.
“The times of getting up within the morning and spending all day on the farm chasing 300 sheep round are gone to a sure extent,” he stated. “We work out {that a} affordable variety of sheep to make a residing off is about 1,200 ewes per individual.
“Like each business, everyone seems to be attempting to work out methods to make yourselves extra streamlined and environment friendly. Eradicating the wool is a means of doing this.”
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