Getting Ready For Shearing Day

We haven’t had rain for a while, but on Thursday, when Ian is coming to shear the sheep, it’s supposed to rain all day.

I’ll put the sheep in the pole barn tomorrow night, so they will be dry.   He can’t shear them if they’re wet.

It’s also best not to feed the sheep for about 12 hours before shearing.  When they are turned on their back to be shorn,  a full stomach can cause them pain and make shearing uncomfortable for them and so for the shearer too.

Today when Braeden was here to brush the donkeys and help feed the animals he and his grandmother Terry said they still wanted to come watch Ian shear the sheep.  “We’ll wear raincoats and have an umbrella,” Terry told me. .

They came in the fall to see the sheep being shorn.  I will be nice to have them there again.

The rest of the flock were shorn in the fall, but Lori and Kim have been growing their wool for a whole year.   They are older than the other sheep and their wool doesn’t grow as fast, but now they’re ready for a haircut.

I wanted to let the sheep graze before they were shorn so they’d have less hay in their wool (they are messy eaters).  But when I heard it was going to rain, I thought it best to wait until after the rain to let them graze.

The rain will do the grass good. This time of year,  with the warm weather, a good rain will make the grass grow overnight.