Out Like A Lot of Lambs

April finally, and warming up. Potholes on the roads, puddles on the laneways, sap in the maple bush, and lambs in the barn.

Which is to say I was out at my cousins' today for shearing day. Meat sheep they may be, but some of the fleeces are lovely, crimpy, soft things (and how they got it in a Rideau/Dorset/Finn melange of a flock, I don't know), and they are planning to send some of the best to a mini-mill this year. My job was to help them identify and sort out the best of the fleeces. Mom came along as well, but she spent half of the day enjoying the cousins' baby and taking her for a sleigh ride.

Each batch of sheep got shooed into the corridor and vaccinated, then into the chute one at a time to await the shearer.

Last year's shearer was not terribly fast, and they ended up with an 18-hour day to shear the lot. There were more sheep this year, but it only took the new shearer maybe 6 hours total for the 110-140 head in the barn - a huge improvement for everyone concerned, including the sheep, who were eager to have a bite to eat. It seems shearers prefer the sheep to be fasting 12 hours ahead, so they're lighter and not farting while you work. Completely understandable - but yeah, after shearing, the sheep all wanted to hang around in the corridor where there was a hay bale they could snack on.

Lambing was planned in stages this year, so one batch had lambed a while ago, and the babies are still nursing, but strong and fuzzy. The pen beside them had the ewes who were clearly pregnant, but not due yet.

Of course, there are always surprises as well. Under all the wool, it's hard to tell who's expecting if it wasn't a planned pregnancy. It seems one of the ram lambs from last year got left in with the girls a little too long, and this morning there was a new baby lamb in with the ewes who were supposedly not expecting! He was snuggled with his mama under a heat lamp, and wearing a cute little sweater. So cute you can't help but say Awww!

 

Busman's Holiday

After a week of cold and wet, it's nice to have a change in the weather. As it is, I spent part of yesterday at work moving flats stored under tables, because they were going moldy from the cold wet conditions.

Monday and Tuesday, however, were just about perfect - dry and sunny and not too hot. I had the two days off, by request, because Monday was the annual shearing day at L'Ourse Qui Danse. Busman's holiday indeed - I traded in a job where I'm on my feet all day for a shearing bee where I'm...on my feet all day. It makes for a long day (8 am when we arrived, and dusk when we left) but it's great fun, great people - and great food, as it's a potluck lunch and supper. (Wish I'd taken a picture of the spread). Most of the team has been at shearing before, so it goes smoothly. A whole system in place and a (superhuman) shearer, and all 21 animals got shorn and skirted before supper.

A couple of the younger guys were in charge of catching and moving alpacas. For the ones in the further barn, they have an enclosure of scaffold and snow fence which gets pulled to the shearing site, and works very well. We stopped skirting to watch the parade go by.

They use the same contraption to bring them back again - except this year, one of the alpacas, Cayenne, refused to wait, and bolted back to her barn the minute she was done being shorn. All we saw was a streak of brown, followed a minute afterwards by a guy in hot pursuit.

The boys turn the alpaca over to Tom the shearer and his team. They strap and hold the alpacas in position on the table, while Tom shears and calls the rough grade (quality) of each section. While the animals are down, they also get pedicures and shots.

One person is in charge of collecting the shorn fleece, and turning it and its rough grade over to Johanne (the boss) and her sister. They sort and pack it into bags labeled with the animal's name, grade, and the year, plus keep samples out for their records, and the mill.

The bagged fleece comes to the skirting team (that's my group!), who have lots to do:
weigh and record quantity of each grade, and record color, texture, staple length, lustre, crimp, and guard hair presence in the first-quality fleece,

then pick hay, second cuts, and off-texture bits out of the fleece. (And ooh and aah over the texture, of course).

We get supervised, because sorting's an important job, and because there's a lot of temptation to just take the fleece home and roll in it. Chantal's dog and Johanne's cat are on duty here. 

And at the end of the day, we had a studio filled with bags of fibre!

Shearing Day

So how behind am I with the blogging? Where do I start? With last Tuesday, I guess – we may as well go in chronological order. Tuesday was alpaca shearing day chez Joanne, and my first time. A good shearing is rather like an old-time bee – a lot of work, food, and camaraderie. It was a sunny, sticky day, and I was glad we were working under a roof. I suspect everyone present, including the alpacas, felt the same. Even under the shed, it was warm enough that fleece would stick to you. Chantal took advantage of this to test out the goatee look.

Cred for photos goes to Deb T, who took a bunch of pictures in between sorting fleece and giving expert advice.

Here’s a glimpse of an alpaca being shorn (off to the right; that's me in the foreground). They’re strapped to a tilt-top table, and it takes a team for an efficient job. We had the shearer doing his thing, and three more collecting the fleece, taking samples, and bringing the first and second quality sections over to the tables for the sorting team. An extra set of hands or two helped restrain the animal, and while each alpaca was on the table, they got teeth and hooves trimmed and vaccinations.

Then the table is tilted down again, and the freshly trimmed and manicured alpaca can go join the others.

I wasn’t helping with the shearing part per se, but the sorting. Each fleece was separated into first and second quality during shearing, and brought to the appropriate table (wire bases in wood frame, to let short bits and dirt fall through, you can see the corners in the picture with me), where we had to record fleece characteristics (color, crimp, length, luster, density…), pick out any short bits from second cuts and the worst of the hay and dirty spots, move any lower-quality bits to the appropriate grade, and bag the fleece for weighing.

Random things learned: Fresh alpaca fleece smells like canned peaches. Even sorting fleece is hard on the back after 5 hours (don’t ask me how the shearer manages to do three months straight of 8+ hour days). And even with a hot day, a bowl of homemade chili is unexpectedly good when you’re tired and hungry. I will definitely go again next year.