Any hobby farmer who has tried to shear a sheep can tell you it’s not easy.
Watching world-class shearer Dave Cadsand de-fleece an unco-operative 80-kilogram (175 pound) wooly ruminant might make one think differently because he can do it in around two minutes.
Having shorn thousands of sheep over his lifetime, speed and accuracy come easy and getting the fleece off in one piece is to be expected. So is the avoidance of nicks and cuts.
March and April are the height of the sheep-shearing season, but Cadsand usually keeps busy February through May. His trade takes him all over British Columbia and into Alberta, and in any one day, he might visit a half dozen farms.
On shearing day, sheep are penned in a confined area where Cadsand can easily grab them one by one and wrestle them over to a wooden surface where he will work. Much of the success of the operation is based on having a good grip on the sheep and on the ground.
He wears special shearing moccasins, which lace up on top and have a good ability to grip from the bottom, despite oil build-up on the shearing board that comes from the fleece.
Electric shears are slung from the ceiling to avoid man and sheep getting tangled in the power cord.
Shears need to be sharp and Cadsand hand grinds the blades as often as needed. He says quality and cleanliness of an animal’s wool determines how often that will be.
“You get out in the sandy country around Williams Lake and you can do in your blades really quick.”
Cadsand also shears a number of alpacas each season, and he says they are especially hard on shears because the animals like to roll on the ground, and in doing so, pick up a lot of debris in their coats.
The condition of a coat is influenced by stress, or lack of it, and Cadsand says it makes a difference at shearing time. Once an ewe has lambed, the wool is stressed and difficult to shear, but if the animal has had access to green grass in its diet, new growth is spurred and the shearing is at its best.
The shearing process starts in the belly area, with the shearer holding the sheep in a most undignified position, flat on its rump and spread-eagle with its back to the shearer’s knees.
Cadsand presses certain known pressure points on the sheep to inhibit its movement while he works. On the day of this interview, he took a kick to the face from a large and unhappy ewe.
He can have a sheep shorn cleanly in about two minutes, where world champions have done it in less than one minute. Even so, Cadsand has been ranked among the best, having won the Canadian championships and he also placed 15th at the world championships, finishing between two former world champions.
He says the results would have been better if he hadn’t broken a tooth on his blade during the competition. The jagged blade created red streaks on the skin of the sheep, which resulted in a loss of points.
“I’ve won my share of competitions but I don’t do it any more. It’s hard on the nerves. You start winning and then people are gunning for you and you don’t want to let them down.”
Cadsand grew up around sheep and learned a few things about shearing from his dad. He was also largely self-taught and put his skills to work as a teen, shearing for other farms.
“Teens will do anything for a buck.”
Later, he was hired by a professional in Alberta who re-taught Cadsand everything he thought he knew.
Bill Hadden, who keeps a flock of 26 ewes near Horse Lake, hired Cadsand to shear his flock last week. Cadsand says there was a time that he wouldn’t look at anything less than 100 head at any job he took on, but times have changed.
Hadden says he’s thankful of that. He tried shearing his own sheep back in his early days of being a sheep rancher, but discovered it took him about as much time to shear one, as it took Cadsand to do the whole flock.
He’s more than happy to leave it to the expert and Cadsand, the shearer, is happy to oblige.
