Wool production is constantly evolving. Merino sheep were bred to produce more wool by selectively keeping those animals with more skin, which appears in folds. More skin equals more wool. The problem with this is twofold : crevasses allow flies to lay maggots and these end up eating the sheep alive. Nasty. The other is the growing opposition to muelsing : the process of cutting the skin around the sheep’s breach to reduce fly strike and reduce the amount of poo building up in the surrounding wool. Muelsing can be brutal, has been typically done with no pain relief and done wrong can kill lambs. Some breeders are now selectively working towards “plain skin” sheep to reduce these issues.
redditprocrastinator t1_iz2n22s wrote
Reply to Did sheep fur always just endlessly grow or was that something that was selectively bred? Were they originally naturally adapted to be going through a lot of foliage and thickets and stuff that would keep their coat relatively trimmed? by EuroTraschBozos
Wool production is constantly evolving. Merino sheep were bred to produce more wool by selectively keeping those animals with more skin, which appears in folds. More skin equals more wool. The problem with this is twofold : crevasses allow flies to lay maggots and these end up eating the sheep alive. Nasty. The other is the growing opposition to muelsing : the process of cutting the skin around the sheep’s breach to reduce fly strike and reduce the amount of poo building up in the surrounding wool. Muelsing can be brutal, has been typically done with no pain relief and done wrong can kill lambs. Some breeders are now selectively working towards “plain skin” sheep to reduce these issues.