The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Sheep => Topic started by: exmoorlady on October 31, 2011, 04:56:05 pm
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Does anyone know of a tannery where I can get my sheepskins cured?. Fenland in bridgewater have just closed down and i don't know of another one. Any help gratefully accepted.
Sharon
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I sent my goatskins to http://www.organicsheepskins.com (http://www.organicsheepskins.com). Not cheap but at least no nasty chemicals are being used...
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There's Devonia at Buckfastleigh.
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hi ,
yes like fleecewife says Devonia, I have used them, and they were good.
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Oh my god Fenland have shut down??!?!?!?!?
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Thanks I will try devonia ,have just found them online. :thumbsup: Gutted about Fenland though, they were only half hour away.
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How much do you have to pay (aprox) to cure a full sized fleece over there around me they charge so much that it is quite a bit cheaper to buy one ready done. Does any one know/have tried doing one themselves?
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Hi
The last time I had a Fleece done - it was About £25 plus the P&P
If you are sending your sheep/ Lamb to the abattoir they should give your fleece back to you with a good
covering of salt on it, this helps the tanning process and stops any wool falling from the fleece.
If the Abattoir don't salt, or you have a home kill sheep/Lamb then you should rub a couple or three good handfulls of salt into the underside of the sheep skin, and leave to the fleece opened right out to for a few days ( I would re-salt it again to be sure its got a nice covering) before posting it off to the tannery. :)
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A small point but might as well be accurate ;). What you get back from the abattoir is a skin. What you get back from the shearer is a fleece :sheep: :sheep: The sheep survives one but not the other.
Our abattoir doesn't salt for us, so we have to get the skins back as soon after killing as possible. It's best to get the salt on within 2 hours. We use DVP salt from the agricultural merchant.
I have never tried doing the whole tanning business myself - far too much hard work ;D ;D
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Point taken - it is a Skin ;)
( I suppose I was only trying to make it more understandable , not as confusing saying 'fleece')
Well that's my excuse anyway ;D
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;D ;D
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You must salt within 2 hours of kill! Length of wool is quite important too.
We paid £20 per skin to be done. Some abattoirs can be funny about releasing the skin as they tend to sell them on themselves so ask first.
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The Abattoirs, will probably add a extra charge to your slaughtering costs (for you taking the skin back), as they will have aloud for the skin cost to be taken into account when calculating the price for your slaughtering.
Last time I looked into it the abattoir's get between £2 and £4 per skin from the tannery, this depends on market forces , time of the year, quality of the skins and also the number they have for the tannery.
so in theory they will charge you the £2 or £4 extra on the bill.
If they don't charge any extra - well you are doing well :)
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We've tried getting our skins from the abattoir, but all they will do is sell us a skin, any skin, as they can't be bothered to identify ours so we don't bother. It's a shame, as it's nice to have the really good quality or particularly well marked ones back.
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If you can be there when they are killing your sheep then you will get their skins back - you don't have to witness it but be there to collect the skins as they are taken off. It's worth asking if you can do that because it's part of the products you get from your animals.
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I agree with fleecewife,
if you ask the abattoir then any abattoir worth its salt, even the bigger ones should be able to give you your skin back, and a small abattoir should have no problem at all.
Best Of luck.
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I agree with fleecewife,
if you ask the abattoir then any abattoir worth its salt, even the bigger ones should be able to give you your skin back, and a small abattoir should have no problem at all.
Best Of luck.
Ha Ha, very dry, "any abattoir worth its salt ........"
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;D
took longenough for a comment ;D
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I hadn't realised you could do that. Thanks. No chance I could get the offal back too I suppose. Nothing like fresh liver.
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The local abbatoir in Somerset will book the sheep in for a specific time then let you wait for the skins. Last year we used Fenland and the treated skins were fantastic - but we had to take them to Bridgewater. We could identify each sheep as there were only a few (6). This year the skins will be collected for us from the abbatoir and taken to Devonia - I think it is going to cost about £30 each - but it means only one trip for us. They always offer us as much of the offal as we want. The butchery and labelling was excellent.
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Sounds fantastic, if only we weren't so far away!
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I hadn't realised you could do that. Thanks. No chance I could get the offal back too I suppose. Nothing like fresh liver.
Certainly you should get the offal back and the lungs as well, if you want them. It's your sheep and therefore your meat. Though I must admit, sometimes our butcher forgets to give us the offal, but only because he freezes it as soon as possible, so it's in a different place to the fresh meat.