[Marches Farmer]

Why do you want to shear by early May?  Flies may well be about by then on sunny days but nights may well still be quite cold and, depending on how old lambs are, ewes can really struggle to stay in milk if they have lambs still suckling a fair amount and they're shorn too early.

[Buffy the eggs layer]

I want to shear then in order to have the right amount of fleece for showing this year. If I paid a shearer to come then I would need to get them all done in early May as I wouldnt want to pay for them to come twice for such a small flock. If I do them myself then I can shear the shearlings in early May and do the ewes when I feel the time is right.
They are already panting in the April sunshine, I think they would be glad of a hair cut.
My ewes with lambs have access to the lambing shed from their padock so come in at night if the weathers bad or could be kept in if there is a risk of significantly cold weather at the end of may. So if I trimmed them early and the weather changed I could avoid their milk suffering.

[SallyintNorth]

I had Philip come and show me how to do it last year, so I now plan to clip some if not all of my 'fleece sheep' myself, at my own pace.

Two tips - one is that on his own hand shears, Philip has fashioned a handle to keep the shears in position on his hand, greatly reducing the amount of work the hand has to do.  (BH had a borrow of these shears and found them very comfortable to use; they were too big for me.)

Second tip is to keep one set of shears for clipping clean fleece and have a completely separate set for dagging.  If you read the packs in the Agri merchant it will explain all about which set is good for which job.  Not to mention that once a pair has been used on dungy cruddy fleece, it will be blunt and not cut cleanly.

Oh, to be thinking about over-warm sheep... sigh.

[Calvadnack]

I like using these Jakoti shears as they're light, very sharp but comfortable in my smaller hands.  I get the shearer in for the main flock but shear the odd one tied up with a halter on.  It takes ages, but the ewes start to doze off as it's quiet.


http://www.handshears.co.uk/products/jakoti-hand-shears.cfm

[Pomme homme]

We bought electric shears on eBay from China. We couldn't afford the prices that the local shops wanted for 'brand name' electric shears. But they seem to have worked fine over the last two seasons in which we've used them. I'm afraid our sheep won't win any prizes in beauty competitions as a result of our shearing. But the bottom line is that they haven't got a mirror out in the fields; they don't know how unattractively they've been sheared; but they're cooler and more comfortable as a result. Furthermore we don't have to worry about the call from the local farmer, at 9:00 am, to tell us that the shearers have arrived and that we need to get our sheep to his farm before lunch time. We don't have a frantic - and sometimes unsuccessful - attempt to round them all up and then shuttle them to and from his farm - our trailer is not large enough to take them all at one go - before the shearers have finished and are ready to depart. Home shearing is not a doddle - but equally, it's not rocket science. And when we shear our flock this year - not yet, as the weather does not yet merit it - we reckon that we'll have come close to paying for the electric shears, contrasting the purchase price to what we would have paid to the shearers (and that's not bringing fuel costs into the equation).   

[Buffy the eggs layer]

Thanks for the advice about the set for dagging and one for shearing. I wonder if I could get round this by changing blades as investing in a second pair of shears would be costly.
I dont know how much it would cost compaired to the cost of a shearer and getting someone in to teach me would be ideal but I knew before I got the sheep that finding an affordable shearer who would be available to do a small flock would be difficult so always knew that I would end up doing it myself.
Im clearly not the only one who finds it easier on a small flock. Thanks for all your tips and suggestions.