Made a start on shearing today!
First up was Ether, as she looked like she really needed to be freed from her heavy coat
But she really wasn’t into it, and I was only able to get to just past her armpits before she decided she’d had enough. Wouldn’t even let me circle back to clean up her left cheek, so she’s looking kind of silly right now.
Then I moved on to little Daphne. She was really nervous at the start, as she’d not been through this before (first haircut!) but she actually settled down pretty nicely and we got through it with minimal drama 🙂
She doesn’t look half bad! but I still need to clean up her undercarriage later. Her fleece is crazy long- about 10″, and I’m not sure how much of it I’ll be able to use, as she had some felting going on-
It’s interesting- at about middle of the staple length she’s got some sort of cotting thing going on, but both above and below that point the fleece is ok.
It’s pretty locked up in the middle, but it does come free with a fair bit of picking and pulling. Doesn’t appear to be a break of weak staple.
Hmmm.
But with such a long total length, I might just end up cutting them and using each half separately. But I’m thinking that going forward I might need to shear her twice a year. Little girl grows a lot of wool!