Shearing Goats and the Resulting Fiber

We had our goats sheared recently; the shearers came to Virginia from Western North Carolina. Seems it is easier to find sheep shearers than those who are willing to work with goats. Who knew goats were such a unique animal. I visited one farm that started with goats and then added sheep, the farmer said sheep will be easy now that you have dealt with goats. She was not a fan, but she had a “mutt” goat that she used for cleaning brush. I have to say, I love my angoras. They are friendly, curious, and very personable. Their personality really came through during the shearing.

Angus is shown below, just relaxing as Charlotte talks him through the process of getting shorn. Angus is a curious fellow who wants to be in your pocket as soon as you step into the field. It seems as though his approach to life is to meet each new experience as an adventure and each new person as a new friend.

I looked over at one point, and Hazel had her eyes closed, just relaxing, but Hattie complained the whole time seemingly to yell “no” much of the time. Hattie is my vocal girl who likes to complain about a lot of things. Breakfast a few minutes late? Hattie indicates she is annoyed. Hattie in heat—oh yeah, she lets me know— whenever I am in sight she screams “HELP” as if I have a boar goat hanging out in the house keeping him from her. Once shorn, and out in the field, the goats ran up and down the field, the pounds of fiber gone from their bodies inspiring them to dance over the fields in joy.

The goats then spent the next week indoors at night under a heat lamp adjusting to the lack heavy coats, but quickly regrew a short coat and were happily back into the field and shed in the cold weather again grazing on grass.

Fiber Processing

Now that I have 19 pounds of fiber, I have to figure out what to do with it. I was here by myself during the shearing so I was just kept busy shutting goats in and out of the stall and getting vaccines ready. So, my first order of business is to skirt the fiber pulling out the really nasty stuff that has urine and feces stuck in it. Because my sheds have some clay on the floor, the goats have a pretty dirty coating of the stuff. I have learned through experimentation (there is a lack of good info on mohair skirting and handling on the web) I have learned it is WAY easier to wash the fiber before trying to sort it further and separate the locks.

The lock on the left is unwashed and pulled out from the rest of the fleece. The lock in the middle has been lightly combed with a dog comb. The lock on the right has been hand separated. All are unwashed.

This is a second cold water soak. You can see that the dirt does soak off much of the fiber.

This fiber has been soaked in cold water four times, then washed once with just a smidge of Dawn (I am awaiting my Unicorn Power Scour-purported by fiber devotees as a miracle product). I then separated the whiter fleece from the more clay stained locks.

This is the cleaned fiber. The smaller pile on the left has been hand teased apart. The slightly yellower pile on the right still has thick locks that needs to be teased apart. Quite a difference from what it looked like when I started!

So, I have learned a few things from my experiences….

I really need to put new footing into a couple of my sheds so that we eliminate the access to the clay floor. I did put down straw, but they often will paw it out of the way to lay in the clay anyway, so I think a bluestone floor is in my worklist for the summer.

Washing the fiber means a lot faster work to tease apart the fiber. I may look into a picker to use on the farm. Because I will be processing small amounts of fiber, the mills that will process my fiber are limited. Now you can understand where the power of scale arises.