Necessary, But With Risks

With warming weather will come ‘shearing time’. For their welfare, adult sheep need to be shorn annually. Additionally, some of the sheep will be being shorn for their fleece to be a product, wool. However, shearing, in itself and in its timing and context, has risks to a sheep’s well-being. 

Shearing of a sheep, from a sheep owner’s perspective, can represent a necessity that is rather a nuisance. It needs to be done on welfare grounds but shearing being done may represent an economic drain - because fleece can be worth less than a shearing cost.

Reasons why shearing needs to be done on welfare grounds include: to give sheep comfortability in hot weather; to try to avoid disease due to insect infestation of fleece. Risks to sheep of shearing include: shearing occurring when weather is too cold, and so the sheep is left not warm enough; sheep that are freshly shorn being exposed to too hot weather or circumstance; a shearer’s lack of adequate training and experience; bad handling of sheep during the whole entirety of the sheep shearing process; cutting or nicking a sheep’s skin; shearing with unclean equipment; shearing a sheep over-fast and so carelessness resulting (usually a shearer will be paid by the number of sheep that they have shorn). 

Sight of the ewe with overgrown fleece, from being stranded for two years on the coast of Scotland, reminds how necessary shearing is on welfare grounds - the ewe was shorn after being rescued (Daily Mail, 6th November 2023). But not to be forgotten is that shearing has risks to sheep.