For Farmers and Crofters

Whether you are a fibre crafter, have a small flock, or have a few favourite sheep out of a large flock, transforming their precious fleeces into clean fluff, or carded batts ready for crafting or selling is a fantastic way to get more value from your wool! These are some things to consider:

Breeds

There are so many different breeds and crosses, and each of their fleece types have qualities to make them suitable for various purposes. The Woolist has a great guide to get you started.

Shetlands spin up lovely soft yarn, Hebrideans make great outerwear or gorgeous felted fleece rugs, Cheviots have bouncy fleeces good for filling cushions, Scottish Blackface have hardwearing fleece for rugs and carpets. Whatever breed you keep, there is a use for their fleece - there's no such thing as 'waste' wool - even the worst fleeces can serve as mulch or compost!

Sheep Care

Fleeces show the tough times of the year, so good nutrition and minerals are really important for a good fleece - to prevent breaks and ensure high quality fibres. Breeding can put stress on a ewe's fleece (at the Hirsel, fibre sheep are bred in rotation, to rest them and harvest stronger fleeces), while shelter can help prevent cotting, and your method of feeding (particularly hay) can make a big difference to how clean the fleeces are, as can the seeds and field scrub present. Minimise markers and paints too, for a cleaner end-products.

Fleece Preparation

There's a saying in the small scale processing world: "garbage in, garbage out". Small mills, with small equipment and a higher amount of manual labour cannot turn VM-heavy fleeces into pristine wool.

Have you ever prepped fleece for small mill processing before? It's a more thorough process than prepping for the wool board, for storage, or for industrial mills, and prepping at all will be new to many of our farming friends who haven't worked with a mill before. All fleeces sent to our mill should be skirted, cleared of all dags and clags, with as much vegetable matter picked out as possible. Though more will fall out during our picking and carding processes, how thoroughly prepped the fleece is by you, before you deliver it to us, will ultimately determine the quality of the final product. Also, as we charge per kilo incoming, you don't want to pay for VM that's only going to end up on our prep floor!

If you've never prepped fleece for a mill before, contact us to learn about ways we can help you with the process.

We buy wool!

We are looking for small amounts - up to 25kg - of clean white or coloured fleeces from local flocks. Email Donna for more info or a callback: info@highlandwool.scot