The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Sheep => Topic started by: Remy on June 03, 2012, 09:03:44 am
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If you plan to sell the fleeces, do you wash them and if so, how? Or if they aren't particularly dirty do you sell them as they are?
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As is, don't wash.
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Washing them is more about removing the lanolin than 'dirt'. You 'skirt' them, ie chop off the dirtiest bits, before you wash them anyway and pick out as much vegetable matter (VM) as you can. This will take me hours with mine, my sheep roll in moss......I can now understand why some spinners put those jackets on their sheep :D
So you could advertise your fleeces as 'in the grease' or 'washed' .
Washing - the critical thing you don't want is heat, agitation and wet all at the same time since that's what makes felt! Since you need heat and wet to wash them, agitation is what you must avoid. And running water or expanding from hot to cold is enough agitation to felt.
One of those old fashioned plastic washing baskets is useful - I have one from Lakeland.
Fill the bath with hot water (60C) and washing up liquid. Put picked and skirted fleece in basket - lower very slowly into bath. Leave to soak for a few hours. Lift out slowly. Replace water with 60C water, no detergent. Lower fleece back in, leave to soak. Repeat til rinsed. Lift out and let drip. Dry on mesh over bath.
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Jaykay,
Thank you for the tips on washing fleece :thumbsup: really useful. Now I know why chucking them over a gate and hosing was no use :-[ :-[ . OH will never know what the new downstairs bath is used for ;D ;D ;D
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Yeh, I forgot to say - no-one had better need a bath for a few days :D
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If someone wants a fleece to be washed before they buy (usually for export) I wash it in cold rainwater. This removes any dirt but leaves in the lanolin, which is consistant with what Customs wants. Otherwise as Jaykay says, just skirt the fleece thoroughly by pulling off any dags or contaminated bits around the edge, and any large amounts of VM. Don't go crazy about it though as it will take up a lot of your time which you won't recoup from the selling price. Just do enough to be able to present an attractive fleece for the buyer, who can then do most of the prep him or her self.
Mostly I sell my fleeces skirted but not washed, but if I do have to wash them then I charge extra.
To wash in rainwater, I use an old dairy trough which has a drain hole in the bottom. I place the fleece onto clematis mesh (but I love your idea of the plastic washing basket Jaykay :thumbsup: ), dunk it gently into the rainwater, leave to soak for half an hour, remove and change the water, repeat til vaguely clean. I sometimes put a drop or two of Ecover washing up liquid into the first wash, to help with the dirt, rather than the lanolin. I then spread out the mesh and carefully open the fleece to its approximate shape, so as not to mess it up too much, and leave it to dry, which can take a couple of days. We don't have a bath :eyelashes: so using the dairy trough is useful for fleece.
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Hi everyone, have read your posts on fleeces with real interest. We're new to the small holder game and in the process of buying a bigger small holding to include sheep. Could I please ask, once you've got your fleece and its been treated in the way you've suggested, what is the next stage, and who would it go to. Apologies if this is a really silly question, just trying to get the process clear in my head! Any help would be appreciated :)
Thank you. Nicki
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You can sell fleeces directly to spinners. Your local Spinners, Weavers and Dyers guild will have a group. Spinners want fine fleeces on the whole not carpet-breed fleeces (Shetlands, Ryelands, downs breeds rather than hill sheep as a very broad example)
Or you can send fleeces to one of the mills that will card fleeces and then sell it to spinners as carded sliver or tops ie 'ready to go' for a higher price. Or some mills will spin it for you too, then you can sell it as yarn or get it knitted into things.
The more processing you do, the higher the value but obviously you have to pay for the processing.
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Jay Kay, thank you so much. That's really helpful :) We were looking at Kerry Hills so that, potentially would work out really well. Now have more research and reading to do. How exciting!!!! :wave: Thank you, again. Nicki
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Shetland fleeces are wonderful.
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I shall have my first home-grown ones this year. Looking forward to them, should keep me in spinning for a while :D
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Shetland fleeces are wonderful.
I agree ;D The Shetland is an excellent all-rounder, with something for everyone. There are Shetlands with superfine fleece and others with coarser wool, especially over the britch, for outer wear or weaving.
However, there is such a huge variety of British fleeces out there that it's worth trying some others to suit a variety of spinning or felting projects. Jeeps - I sound like an educational broadcast :&>
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Jaykay, congratulations!!! Hope they keep you happy and out of mischief!! :wave:
Fowlman, will keep peepers peeled for superfine fleece shetlands ;D
Fleecewife, the most interesting educational broadcast I've read in a while!! :wave:
Thank you, all, very much.
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We're new to the small holder game and in the process of buying a bigger small holding to include sheep. Could I please ask, once you've got your fleece and its been treated in the way you've suggested, what is the next stage, and who would it go to.
Unless the rules have changed, 'in theory' once you have more than a handful of fleeces (3 or 5, I think) you are supposed to sell them to the Wool Board or get an exemption from them to use/sell them yourself. The price of wool has gone up in the past 2-3 years so finally farmers are starting to recoup their shearing costs from the sale of their fleeces. One thing to watch for though is the cost of transportation to the depot. If possible you would want to deliver the fleeces directly into an intermediate depot and then there wouldn't be any transportation costs. The fleeces have to be delivered to the depot in the proper wool bags (called wool sheets) - each of these holds around 25 to 30 fleeces. At the time of delivery, a peppercorn payment is made for the wool, the balance of the payment is made the following year. Price depends on weight, type and quality of the fleece.
Obviously you are a long way from all of this and, as with many smallholders, you may decide to handle the sale/use of your own fleeces and not be bothered with the Wool Board. I've only just registered with the Wool Board, after 8 years of owning sheep, as I now have too many fleeces to know what to do with them all.
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I agree about shetland fleeces being great. Small enough to wash and handle and they stay together wonderfully when you wash them so you can bundle them better at the end. Did 5 shetland fleeces in two days whereas it is taking me about a day per grey faced dartmore fleece. Haven't tackled the leicester longwool fleeces yet. They are huge!
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Found this:
" Am I allowed to sell my fleeces to handspinners?
Yes. Under paragraph 70 of the British Wool Marketing Scheme (Approval) Order, any fleece sold directly to a handspinner to be processed by hand, by that spinner, is exempt from the BWMB scheme. This is in addition to the relatively well- known rare breed exemption, under which fleece from the following native breeds can be sold outside the Scheme: Balwen, Boreray, Castlemilk Moorit, Hebridean, Leicester Longwool, Lincoln Longwool, Llanwenog, Manx Loaghtan, Norfolk Horn, North Ronaldsay, Portland, Soay, and Teeswater. It is less widely known that crosses with those breeds are also exempt"
In this leaflet about spinners and fleeces http://www.yarnmaker.co.uk/fleece/FleeceSellweb.pdf (http://[url=http://www.yarnmaker.co.uk/fleece/FleeceSellweb.pdf)
This is driving me mad, I HATE this new quote and weblink system.
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Has anyone ever gotten into trouble with the WMB over fleeces?
People round here keep telling me I am supposed to sell my fleeces this way. What will they do to you if you say 'NO'.? I can't imagine it is a hanging offence :D
Anyway I tell people I don't shear my sheep (true) and that they shed their fleeces naturally (technically true), and allow them to assume that it is stuck in hedges etc not plucked lovingly and saved for spinning :innocent:
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Well every year I have faithfully registered with the WMB and each year they have failed to send me my woolsack and then, when I've finally got myself one, they have failed to turn up to collect it, though they collect my (very large) neighbour's sacks, half a mile down the road (the farm is large, not the neighbour ;))
So I have a hayloft full of Rough Fell fleeces, which now I need to deal with.
This year I have Shetland fleeces. Which I am going to do with as I see fit! Mainly, in fact, I shall spin them myself.
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This year I have Shetland fleeces. Which I am going to do with as I see fit! Mainly, in fact, I shall spin them myself.
:eyelashes: :eyelashes: :eyelashes: Swapsies??? Or, given I only have 4 CMs and one's busy losing its fleece; swapsie? :eyelashes:
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Thanks for all the interesting info; what do you do with fleeces no good for selling - some of mine are quite mucky/fall apart, and are only good for the bin - can they go out with normal refuse or do they have to be disposed of in a certain way?
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They will compost if you mix them in with your other compost.
Or if you have any poached gateways etc throw them down on there, they will bind the mud together nicely. :)
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I am getting ready to sell eight fleeces from my Gulf Coast Native Sheep here in the US. Since this is my first sale I was wondering if I was getting a fair price. I realize the market may be different here and that you may not be familiar with this US sheep breed, but was wondering what an average price might be for unwashed, skirted fleece. It is not a fine wool and some are black and some white. I have been offered $1.50 USD per pound.
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I think that works out at about £1 english to 2kg of fleece - here I think folk can get up to about £5 per fleece 1kg - 2kg but that would be for good fleeces to spinners so hopefully someone with more knowledge will come along
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2 seasons ago 4 pence a kilo was the average price for low grade carpet wool, last year it picked up a little but did not cover the cost of sheering for the big sheep men who must sell to the wool marketing board.
Nice soft long staple wool will command a bigger price, for home spinners, Angora goat fleece can get £40 per kilo.
So compared to us , I think you have a good deal there Frosty.
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Prices for good quality fleece tend to be higher in the US than in Britain, but there seems to be more choice so your product needs to be good. Have a look at online fleece sales to see what the going rate is, or pop along to one of the many fleece and fibre festivals.
Brucklay - £5 is the minimum anyone should accept for a fleece intended for craft work - less than that and it's such poor quality as not to be worth selling. A good quality run of the mill fleece would sell for about £10 and a perfect sooper-dooper fleece could sell for as much as £40 (but there are not many of those around :D ). The British Wool Marketing Board of course pays far less than that, just a few pence before collection, but they buy the whole clip, not just selected top quality fleeces.
My maths tells me that at $1.50 per pound, with a roughly 1:1 exchange rate, would be £3 per kg, so £6 for an average 2kg fleece. Or have I got my exchange rate from pre financial implosion? :o AllenFrost, I would say your price is fair enough for a first time sale, before you know more about what potential buyers are looking for. :sheep:
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Thanks for the update Fleecewife always a font of knowledge - I need to sell my Shetland fleeces and CM somehow - their first shear and I bought them pedigree and was told they had good fleeces - they are all very soft and springy - but have yet to learn the technical terms ie not sure of 'crimp' and they all weigh between 1 and 2 kilo - never enough hours in the day to learn everything I need to and implement
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Your local spinners will snap both those type of fleeces up!
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The fleeces sound lovely Brucklay. Once they are skirted ie dags and any scruffy bits of wool pulled off around the edges to neaten it up a bit, and any major bits of veggie stuff taken off the surface, they would sell well via the internet if you don't know anyone locally looking for fleece. It's much less bother to sell them within this country though or you get caught up in export requirements.
Crimp is the number of little kinks along the length of a fibre or staple. If you lie a small tuft of your fleece along a ruler you can actually count the number of kinks per inch. Crimp affects how springy the fleece feels to some extent but mainly it affects how much the eventual fabric and yarn will spring back ie its resilience. Shetland fleece is quite crimpy, Merino is very crimpy, Hebridean is not usually very crimpy (average about 2 -3 per inch). The wool over the shoulder and neck is usually the crimpiest on any sheep, and the least is found over the britch, where the sheep sits. For Shetlands the ideal is to have even crimp and micron count (diameter of each fibre) over the whole fleece from top to tail.
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Alan's sheep
The bloodlines of Gulf Coast Native sheep can be traced back to the original prolifteration of Churra sheep (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Churra_sheep) in the New World during the 15th century by the Spanish. Later, these Criollo-type (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criollo) sheep mixed intermittently with British and French breeds. Some strains may also show Tunis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunis_(sheep)) influence.[1]
http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://www.albc-usa.org/images/GulfCoast.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.albc-usa.org/cpl/gulfcoast.html&h=269&w=360&sz=66&tbnid=NndCEH4ESLdD1M:&tbnh=93&tbnw=124&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dgulf%2Bcoast%2Bnative%2Bsheep%26tbm%3Disch%26tbo%3Du&zoom=1&q=gulf+coast+native+sheep&usg=__4LeaQ7oHb5lfLgt29IVIvGAG3MU=&docid=zEYXQbkzYTECBM&sa=X&ei=uzvQT721DeOy0QW_x8HJCw&ved=0CIABEPUBMAM&dur=938 (http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://www.albc-usa.org/images/GulfCoast.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.albc-usa.org/cpl/gulfcoast.html&h=269&w=360&sz=66&tbnid=NndCEH4ESLdD1M:&tbnh=93&tbnw=124&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dgulf%2Bcoast%2Bnative%2Bsheep%26tbm%3Disch%26tbo%3Du&zoom=1&q=gulf+coast+native+sheep&usg=__4LeaQ7oHb5lfLgt29IVIvGAG3MU=&docid=zEYXQbkzYTECBM&sa=X&ei=uzvQT721DeOy0QW_x8HJCw&ved=0CIABEPUBMAM&dur=938)
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Good horns on the tips :thumbsup: The ewes look quite Shetlandy, have thought that about Churros before too.
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Fleecewife, some of my Shetland lambs have very tight curls over their neck and shoulders and some have quite silky fleeces, with just waves. The different between African curly hair and European wavy hair I'd say :D So - should I be keeping the curlies?
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Alan's sheep
The bloodlines of Gulf Coast Native sheep can be traced back to the original prolifteration of Churra sheep (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Churra_sheep) in the New World during the 15th century by the Spanish. Later, these Criollo-type (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criollo) sheep mixed intermittently with British and French breeds. Some strains may also show Tunis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunis_(sheep)) influence.[1]
http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://www.albc-usa.org/images/GulfCoast.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.albc-usa.org/cpl/gulfcoast.html&h=269&w=360&sz=66&tbnid=NndCEH4ESLdD1M:&tbnh=93&tbnw=124&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dgulf%2Bcoast%2Bnative%2Bsheep%26tbm%3Disch%26tbo%3Du&zoom=1&q=gulf+coast+native+sheep&usg=__4LeaQ7oHb5lfLgt29IVIvGAG3MU=&docid=zEYXQbkzYTECBM&sa=X&ei=uzvQT721DeOy0QW_x8HJCw&ved=0CIABEPUBMAM&dur=938 (http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://www.albc-usa.org/images/GulfCoast.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.albc-usa.org/cpl/gulfcoast.html&h=269&w=360&sz=66&tbnid=NndCEH4ESLdD1M:&tbnh=93&tbnw=124&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dgulf%2Bcoast%2Bnative%2Bsheep%26tbm%3Disch%26tbo%3Du&zoom=1&q=gulf+coast+native+sheep&usg=__4LeaQ7oHb5lfLgt29IVIvGAG3MU=&docid=zEYXQbkzYTECBM&sa=X&ei=uzvQT721DeOy0QW_x8HJCw&ved=0CIABEPUBMAM&dur=938)
Thank you for that Tizaala. The breed sounds wonderful - totally adapted to local conditions, a real native rare breed and well worth preserving. AllenFrost - you should include some information about your breed if you advertise the fleeces online, as many spinners like to support the rarer types. It would help your sales too if you could get a knowledgeable spinner to take a look at your fleeces and show you their good and bad points, so you know what to promote when selling in future years. Good luck with them :thumbsup:
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Fleecewife, some of my Shetland lambs have very tight curls over their neck and shoulders and some have quite silky fleeces, with just waves. The different between African curly hair and European wavy hair I'd say :D So - should I be keeping the curlies?
There was some discussion of this on the Shetland Online group recently and opinions were split as to whether birth fleeces are a true indicator of the adult fleece. So from that point of view you are best not to make any decision until the lambs are older. I have found that what seems a wonderfully fine and crimpy fleece at first shearing has metamorphosed into a horrible brillo pad by the second shear ::) . Some people would only keep the fine crimpy lambs, whereas others said that the silkier ones had turned into perfectly good adult fleeces.
Then there is the question of why you are keeping your Shetlands. If you want to breed topclass show winners then your criteria for lamb selection will send you one way, but if you just want some interesting and varied fleeces for spinning then you might want to select slightly different fleeces ie a wider range of types.
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Thanks for the info on the Gulf Coast Natives and the advice on selling the wool. This is my first shearing so next season I'll have more time to investigate the market. :fc:
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There was some discussion of this on the Shetland Online group recently and opinions were split as to whether birth fleeces are a true indicator of the adult fleece
That's worth knowing, thank you :thumbsup: Don't think that I'm breeding for showing yet, but might and anyway I like to make sure my stock is good. But mainly because I want their fleeces and meat.
The most silky wavy lamb is from a ewe with perfectly good crimp in her fleece and the tup has, so maybe she'll get curlier with age.
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Here's a photo of a sample off the neck of one of my Shearling Shetlands. Each year I try to pick out some of the better fleeces for private sales (£5 per kg for the best. £2 per kg for the good). Most goes to the wool brokers.
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Sorry folks my photo is a bit big if you click on it. The fist time I have tried to post an image. However, I think you can count the crimps per cm