Also there's still wild species of sheep, or "cousins" of domestic sheep, like mouflon, who, in the wild, don't grow as much wool compared to regular sheep, and typically shed it the way most other animals shed their excess hair/fur/etc, or it gets caught in shrubbery, which acts in a similar manner to a brush.. The excess wool growth in sheep bred for their wool is the result of selective breeding for wool production. the wild ancestors of domestic sheep, mouflon, don't have much wool. today there are domestic sheep breeds that don't have any wool.. Sheep are sheared in the spring, just before they would naturally shed their winter coats. because shearing too late would mean a loss of wool, most sheep are sheared while it is still too cold. an estimated one million sheep die every year of exposure after premature shearing..
I did a little research, as i was unsure if the gotland sheep i saw grazing indeed were shedding their wool. i decided to contact sue blacker. she owns a mill in england that specializes in pure breed wools, and she has also written a book about many different breeds of sheep and the wool they produce.. A last group of sheep breeds is that of fur or hair sheep, which do not grow wool at all. hair sheep are similar to the early domesticated sheep kept before woolly breeds were developed, and are raised for meat and pelts. some modern breeds of hair sheep, such as the dorper, result from crosses between wool and hair breeds.. Hi, the more ancient species of sheep like the shetland, soay etc do shed their fleeces naturally and humans would just go around picking up the wool but once man started to selectively breed sheep for their fleeces they lost the ability to shed naturally and had to be shorn..
