Wool Fiber: The Magic Fiber

Because of the precious lambs, I have been eagerly reading up on sheep raising. While the children watched THREE of the Star Wars movies, I read Shearing Day book on shearing with hand shears, rather than with electrical clippers. I read that clippers are, perhaps, easier to learn on. However, they sounded less desirable in every other way. Clippers cost at least ten times as much; they have many more parts that require maintenance (oils, fancy sharpening); they shear closer to the skin, which means the sheep are more likely to chill and die; they are heavy and noisy; they require electricity, and, as such, the shearer is restricted in location. In the hands of skilled shearers, neither tool is faster than the other, and neither is more likely to nick than the other. To my utmost relief, I read a line like, “Sheep are abundantly capable of healing from even severe wounds,” which was my greatest comfort in the debacle of the tail docking.

The best part of the book first listed different sheep breeds. Ashley, a Dorset, makes good yarn wool; her lambs, as well as Acorn the sheep, are a Dorset/Rambouillet mix; the Rambouillet descends from a Merino sheep, with a fiber diameter of about 20 microns. (For perspective, hair is about 150 microns.) Our Southdown Babydolls should have that lovely, premium micron count. I think the issue with itchy wool happens with fibers that are around 35 or 40 microns.

Next, the book talked about the actual wool. A good quality wool has more crimping. Perhaps a coarse wool has a crimp every centimeter; a quality wool might have 10 crimps. More “heritage breed” wools have both wool and hair, sort of like a downy coat and a hair coat our dog had when we were growing up. They might have four wool fibers to each hair fiber.

As the shepherds kept breeding, they were able to increase the numbers of wool fibers per hair fiber. Once the wool fibers hit 16 to 20, they cut the blood supply to the hair fibers, and the wool became uniform, with no hair fibers.

Good wool remains uniform all over the sheep, forming little clumps of fibers. And if the sheep is stressed, either from malnutrition or moving or anything else, it will grow a weak spot in the wool. The author said he can take a pencil sized amount of wool without any stress spots, and the tensile strength is such that he cannot break it with his fingers.

Wool is the most genetic of all sheep traits, more so than twin births or good meat or anything else. So, the shearer argued, all shepherds need to take responsibility to breed for quality wool, or the quality decreases rapidly.

I found the structure of the wool the most interesting: as the wool hardens, or keratinizes, the keratinized structure can absorb about 35% of its weight in water, and it somehow has an exothermic process (as it evaporates, maybe?), which gives off heat. Thus, the wool keeps a person both warm and dry.

Doesn’t this want to make you keep sheep, too? (Or maybe you just will want to buy wool products from a small flock, like Lona's, a Sonlight user.)

Wool fiber, the magic fiber.