We have Dorper sheep. Dorpers are supposed to shed their wool at intervals, which means that you don't have to shear them.

But not all Dorpers do that reliably. Over time our flock has moved away from a pure-looking Dorper. The ones I like are big, stately sheep with a black head.
What we have seen is they tend away from that, and without keeping a tight rein on their offspring you start seeing more black or multicolored sheep. And generally, the black sheep don't moult as readily, and finish up accumulating a heavy coat.

This time of year, you can imagine how hot it would be to wear a thick, insulated black fur coat. Some of them develop a felted understory of wool nearly a centimetre thick, or a fluffy coat up to 5 centimetres thick. So we shear the ones that need it.

Of all the things we have done here, shearing the sheep is probably the most indicative of how inexperienced we were when we started.

Originally it could take us up to an hour to round them up and get them into the yards. Now I feed them in the morning in the paddock next to the yards, then we go out and they are waiting for us. Our self-taught kelpie is keen to round them up. His main weakness is his enthusiasm, but now we run him on a 10 metre rope and we can keep him in check enough. Nowadays it takes us less than five minutes to round them up and shut the gate. It's easier with two, but when I have to I can easily round them up with just the dog helping.

Originally I bought some handshears, watched some YouTube videos, and got onto it. I knocked them over in the traditional way, locked them into place between my legs, which is them in a sitting up position, and clipped away for up to an hour per sheep. Dorpers are big sheep, and not used to being handled (unlike, say a Merino), and to keep them in place, while bent over and clipping away, was exhausting. Some of them weigh up past 60 kilos and are stronger than me. It was a hard slog. Dorpers also need their hooves trimmed at intervals, and I managed that job much more easily.

So we progressed onto electric clippers. That's a different scale of operation. You need power, so I had to get a generator out to the yards. Its pretty heavy, so I have a small trailer kept available for it. I use the trailer for other jobs the rest of the year, but while we are shearing its a single purpose trailer!

And we have moved away from the shearing-shed wrestle hold. I have a set of straps on the fence and we "simply" latch the sheep into place. One loop under the chin and one under the belly. They find it hard to move and mostly stand still once they realize they are locked in place. Mostly. They still try all sorts of tricks...a sudden lunge against the straps, or duck their head out of the loop and catapult upwards. Yesterday we had one drop down, a common strategy, but this one put all the weight on her neck and strangled herself. As her eyes rolled up I cursed and frantically unravelled the knot she had tightened. She flopped limp to the ground and I was thinking I had killed her when she shook her head and came back.

When I say "simply" latch them into place....the pen is about 2 1/2 metres square. If its just you and one sheep you can run round and round that small space grabbing at an elusive sheep for a very long time. I'm sure its funny to watch, but not much fun to do. If you jam half a dozen of them in at once they can't run. They can dodge and hide, ram you in the knee, but they are reachable. You still have to move them to the fence and keep them still long enough to strap them in, but its do-able.

My dogs still think they are on duty. We tie them up, outside the yards, in the shade and out of the way. They've been known to suddenly appear off-leash and re-commence hassling the sheep, which can be infuriating when you are in the middle of restraining a struggling sheep. As we finish with each pen of sheep we open the gate to let them out. The sheep hesitate, then bolt, and as they leave the pen they gracefully leap into the air and kick out. It looks very athletic. My dogs roar as the sheep fly past them, and we move onto the next group.

We could stay out and keep at it until its all done, but its hot and hard work. We don't have any shade over the yards, so its not just us cooking in the sun...the sheep getfried too. So we start early and knock off when it starts to too hot. Another couple of days and they'll all be done.