Raw Materials for Woolen Industry

Wool is the animal fiber forming the protective covering, or fleece, of sheep or of other hairy mammals, such as goats and camels. Prehistoric man, clothing himself with sheepskins, eventually learned to make yarn and fabric from their fiber covering. Selective sheep breeding eliminated most of the long, coarse hairs forming a protective outer coat, leaving the insulating fleecy undercoat of soft and fine fiber.

Wool is mainly obtained by shearing fleece from living animals, but pelts of slaughtered sheep are sometimes treated to loosen the fiber, yielding an inferior type called pulled wool. The wool is removed with shears similar to those a barber uses. This process of shearing does not hurt the sheep. In about five minutes the wool is shorn from the sheep in a single piece, called the fleece. The fleece is carefully rolled and tied for bagging. Most shearing is done between February and June, just before lambing. Most shearers move from ranch to ranch. A good shearer can shear from 80 to 125 head of sheep a day. A highly trained expert can shear up to 225 head of sheep in one day. Fleeces are rolled up and tied, then packed into sacks. These sacks hold between 20 and 35 fleeces (of 4-12 lbs each) and weigh an average of 200 to 400 pounds. From this step the processing of the wool begins.
Wool fiber is chiefly composed of the animal protein keratin. Protein substances are more vulnerable to chemical damage and unfavorable environmental conditions than the cellulose material forming the plant fibers. Coarser than such textile fibers as cotton, linen, silk and rayon, wool has diameters ranging from about 16 to 40 microns (a micron is about 0.00004 inch). Length is greatest for the coarsest fibers. Fine wools are about 1.5 to 3 inches (4 to 7.5 centimeters) long; extremely coarse fibers may be as much as 14 inches in length. Wool is characterized by waviness with up to 30 waves per inch (12 per centimeter) in fine fibers and 5 per inch (2 per centimeter) or less in coarser fibers. Color, usually whitish, may be brown or black, especially in coarse types, and coarse wools have higher luster than fine types.