I got an interesting phone call last night.   The phone rang at 9 PM and I didn't recognize the number on the caller ID.  The phone said it was a cellular call from an area code I didn't recognize, so I didn't think it was a telemarketer.  This is now the conversation went...

"Hello."
"You have the Finnsheep, right?"
"Yes."
"I have some questions about your sheep."
"OK, what you need to know?"

I have learned to ask this question because whenever someone says, "Tell me about Finnsheep," the information they really want to know and what I think they should know are seldom the same.  This saves me a lot of time talking on the phone telling someone things they don't care about.  (Most of the information that people want or need to know is on my farm website or the FBA website anyway.)

"Well, really it isn't about your sheep."
"OK...."  (I am beginning to wonder if there are harder questions ahead like story problems about the amount of time it takes a train to travel between two stations given a particular rate of speed.  -- I always hated those.)

"I see on your website that you jacket your sheep."
"Yes, I do."
"How do you like them?"

I was relieved that at least it was a topic I knew something about and that there would be no story problems!

For those who are interested, here is anything you might want to know about sheep coats -- whether you are thinking about jacketing your sheep (real sheep or dream sheep) or if you have always wondered why jacketed fleeces cost so much.


Here is Usko wearing a sheep coat.

Sheep coats are meant to protect the wool, they are not designed to keep the sheep warm.  So they should be called "wool covers" except that nobody really does.  That said, they are warmer than no coats.  I have started putting a smaller sized jacket back on my rams after shearing and leaving them on for a month or so.  Even though all the sheep stay in the barn for at least a week and sometimes more (depending on the weather) after they are shorn, in years past, if anyone is going to get sick from the stress of shearing and cold, it is a ram.

Some people use sheep coats to prevent sunbleaching on the tips of their colored fleeces.  I don't do that.  It would be nice if the tips of my colored fleeces didn't get lighter in the summer sun, but that cannot be my first priority.  During our hot months of July and August, my sheep spend the whole day lying in the shade panting and looking miserable like they are counting the days until the first snowfall.  I don't want to put anything else on them that might make them hotter.  The live animals have to come first and then the wool.  Dead sheep don't grow any wool and sick or stressed sheep don't grow nice wool.

By now, you might be asking why I don't just shear them in the summer instead of in the spring.  This is for a  variety of reasons. 

• I hire a professional shearer so that means all the sheep get sheared on the same day.  Even if I did it myself (which would probably be a disaster for all involved), it would be a huge amount of labor to constantly move sheep in and out of the barn in shifts all the time -- to dry them off for a day or two, shear them and then keep them in until some wool grows back.
  

• It is nice to be able to shear before lambing if possible.  (I am fortunate that my barn is warm enough to allow me to do this.)  This keeps the amniotic fluid off of the wool (good for wool, more sanitary for sheep).  Short wool also leaves you with fewer things hanging down for baby lambs to try to nurse off of.  The faster that baby lambs can find the teat on their own, the healthier for the lamb and a reduction in sleep deprivation for the shepherdess.  When the baby lamb lays up next to the mother, they feel the warmth of her body and not just a lot of wool.  (The normal temp for a sheep is 100 to 102.5 F.  Wool is warm, but not that warm!) 
  

• Sheep also need about half an inch of wool on their bodies to prevent sunburn.  If they do get sunburned, it can create scar tissue and that area of their skin will never grow wool again. 
  

• Finally, wool is their protection for biting flies (like deer flies and horse flies) during the summer days and mosquitoes during summer nights.  I have tried spraying my sheep with fly repellent -- not successfully -- it also repels sheep!
  

My sheep get jacketed in the fall when we start to feed hay.  During the summer months, the sheep are out on pasture.  That keeps their wool quite clean.  Anything they get in their wool is just dirt from the ground or dust from the air which come out quite well when the fleeces is washed with dish soap, shampoo, or mild laundry soap.  Chaff is the real enemy - also known as VM, for vegetable matter.  This is bits of hay and straw that get mixed up in the wool.  Some of this will come out in carding, but your only sure removal method is "monkey grooming" your fleece by hand.

So, if jacketing sheep gives you beautiful fleeces free of VM, why doesn't everyone do it?  The answer is expense and labor -- lots of both.

The coats are expensive.  (Regardless of brand or if you make them yourself.)  I use the sheep coats made by the Powell Sheep Co. in CA.  Here is their information.

• Powell Sheep Coats, P.O. Box 183, Ramona, CA 92063. 760-789-1758.
  

The Powell coats are made of a beige material that looks like linen but is actually made of a synthetic.  They will shed water until it rains really hard.  They also seem to breathe well.  They go over the head like a pancho and have fabric loops that go under the back legs.  (Hint: fold up the sheep's leg to put it through the loop.  Don't try to do it with the leg outstretched.)


Here is the side view of the coats on some of my ewes.  There is elastic along the bottom of both sides (just behind the front legs), as well as some loose elastic around the neck and the rear.  With Finns (or other breeds with tails) you need to make sure that the jacket is not too long so that their tail can still stick out the hole for the rear end (for the comfort, health and safety of the sheep).

I use sizes med/small (#5), medium (#6) and med/avg (#7) for Finn lambs. On average, my lambs wear 3 coats in a fall/winter.  The lambs' bodies are growing as well as their wool. My adult sheep wear 2 coats in a winter. Finn wool has excellent felting properties and if you let the coat get too tight, you will felt the fleece right on the sheep. I use sizes med/avg (#7) thru regular (#10) for my adult ewes and rams. Avg/reg (#9) is not quite big enough for my largest Finn rams when they are in full fleece. The next size up regular (#10) is a little loose but works OK.

Coats are expensive!  Prices on the Powell coats range from $12.65 for a coat in size med/small (#5) to $22.25 for a coat in size regular (#10).  That is for ONE coat. They have larger and smaller sizes too, but I don't think you would need them for a Finn unless you jacketed really small lambs during the summer months.

There are a couple of other brands of coats such as the Matilda coat which originates in Australia.  The Matilda fabric is rather thin and looks like a windbreaker (light rain jacket).  One of my friends who had previously used the  Powell coats, tried these and found that they ripped an equal amount.  So I have just stuck with the Powell.  I think they look pretty nice, I like that all of my sheep match and I have know how to repair the coats.

I have also priced making my own coats.  The problem is that to buy a good synthetic material that will breathe and be pretty rugged, you would spend as much on the fabric as you would to buy the coats pre-made.  And that doesn't take into consideration the hours of labor to make them.  One year I found a website that sold scraps of the "Sunbrella" that is used to make awnings, hammocks and cushions for outdoor lawn furniture.  Even buying these scraps, I would not have been able to save money making the coats for myself.  I imagine that you would have to make tons of coats so that you could buy bolts of fabric wholesale in order to make it worth your while.  If you are so inclined to make your own sheep coats  there are instructions on the web for how to do so.  The Powell coats are made using a serger rather than a standard sewing machine.  I think that using a serger would save time with a lot of hemming since the breathable fabric is likely to fray - a lot - unless all cut edges were hemmed or serged.

In addition to the initial cost of the coat and the labor to pen up the sheep and dress them in their coats (a two person job unless your sheep is like Uma or Rammy lamby who will just stand there and let me dress them like they were sheep-dolls), you must also repair the coats.  Unless a coat gets a gigantic rip that is so big that it defeats the purpose of having a coat, or there is damage that poses a danger to the sheep, such as a torn leg strap dragging on the ground, I only change the coats when they get too tight.  It breaks your heart to put a new or newly repaired coat  on a sheep and hear that rrrriiiipppp sound as they catch it on something.  Even after removing anything remotely sharp from our pasture and barn where a sheep might catch or rip a coat.  They still find a way.  They rub their bodies on things to scratch them (as opposed to rolling around like a horse or dog) and they find things... sheep are talented that way.

So the repairs are primarily a summer job, unless you are running short of coats and need to wash the coat and repair it to put it on someone else so they can have a bigger size.  The rips along the sides are a pretty quick repair.  I buy khaki colored polyester at the fabric store and use that for a backing, then zig-zag across the rip with the sewing machine.  This makes a pretty tidy repair.  If you try to repair it without the backing fabric, it won't hold due to the open-weave fabric that they are made of.  If it is a big hole, I make a little patch out of the same fabric.  I make a square or rectangle, turn and stitch the edges under to make it look tidy, the sew it over the outside of the hole.  The repair that takes a long time is repairing and replacing broken elastic.  The elastic that usually breaks is the tighter piece behind the front leg.  This elastic allows the coat to curve around the sheep (because sheep aren't actually rectangular like a shoe box) but still have enough give for the sheep to comfortably walk and for a bit of expansion as their wool grows.

The coats have their size marked on the inside of the flank portion with a Sharpie marker.  After washing and repairing each coat, darken this notation so that it doesn't fade away.  Otherwise it is a hassle to figure out what size each coat is when you are dressing your sheep.  I also note what size coat each sheep wears every year.  That gives me a starting point for the following year.  I hold the back of the coat up to the nape of the sheep's neck and stretch it out to the tail.  If the length from neck to tail seems about right, that is a good size to start with.  (You may be wrong on a couple of sheep and have to go up or down a size, once you get it on.)

Most of the sheep don't seem to notice their coats.  Each year, I usually have one sheep "freak out" a bit that something is chasing him and run around after I let them out of their pen or the barn where they were contained to "get dressed".  It isn't always a first timer.  I think that some of them forget about coats over the summer.  When they realize that nothing is catching them and running isn't helping, they settle down.  This lasts less than a minute and nobody has ever hurt themselves.  Last fall Usko almost ran over me, but I was nimble and he was fine.  And after about a minute, he didn't care anymore.  It helps to jacket them in the late afternoon and then give them some hay to munch on.  (We aren't the only ones who like comfort food.)