# Ever tried clippers on sheep?



## Southdown (Nov 26, 2012)

Has anyone ever tried using a clippers machine on sheep?  I believe they are primarily for hair animals.  I'm wondering about trying one on sheep legs and faces (for wool breeds, like southdowns).  Any experience?


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## SheepGirl (Nov 26, 2012)

I've used dog clippers (my mom uses them to give my brothers and dad and our dogs haircuts) on one ewe because she never got sheared on shearing day (two sheep died and so my neighbor just had the shearer stop--he sent all unshorn ewes to auction but because this was my ewe she stayed on the farm). It didn't work at all and it took less than 1/4" of wool off at once.  Because the clipper machines didn't work, I took hand shears (which were dull, so didn't work too well) & a brand new pair of SHARP scissors to her entire body with her in a head gate. Worked like a charm.


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## Alice Acres (Nov 26, 2012)

Do you mean regular electric sheep shears?

If so, yes. We have one and my husband shears our entire flock with it. We have regular wool sheep. He uses it on our llama too!

Ours is an Oster Shearmaster...here is a link to what it looks like:

http://images.search.yahoo.com/imag...=1371a8rrt&sigb=12ij5a7o1&fr=goodsearch-yhsif

Dang, hope this works!


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## Alice Acres (Nov 26, 2012)

OK, I dug in my old pictures - here is my granddaughter Bre helping Grandpa!
It's an old photo - she's 10 years old now.


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## secuono (Nov 27, 2012)

Alice Acres said:
			
		

> OK, I dug in my old pictures - here is my granddaughter Bre helping Grandpa!
> It's an old photo - she's 10 years old now.
> 
> http://www.backyardherds.com/forum/uploads/7249_bre_clipper.jpg


These big, real sheep shears is what I use.

Shearer lady tried some dog/horse clippers and they failed miserably with my sheep's dense wool.


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## ksalvagno (Nov 27, 2012)

The only way the smaller clippers work is if you have skip tooth blades. For small jobs (ie crias), I have used my Andis with the 7 skiptooth blade and that works well. But I probably wouldn't want to do an adult sheep with one.


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## Alice Acres (Nov 27, 2012)

ksalvagno said:
			
		

> The only way the smaller clippers work is if you have skip tooth blades. For small jobs (ie crias), I have used my Andis with the 7 skiptooth blade and that works well. But I probably wouldn't want to do an adult sheep with one.


I doubt that it would work well. I have an Andis 2 speed...in fact I just did a complete shave of a matted OES yesterday with it using my skip tooth blade...and it took hours to do one dog. 
If I would have had a plain #10 handy it would have gone better, but it was at my daughter's house. And this way Pearl (the OES) is not so nekkid looking


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## ksalvagno (Nov 27, 2012)

Probably depends on the type of fiber. On the alpacas, it worked great and made shearing crias much easier.


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## Southdown (Nov 27, 2012)

We have a regular shearing machine (Oster Showmaster).  I was wondering about the clippers/clipping machines, commonly used on alpacas, dogs, etc.  So far, it sounds like they fail miserably on sheep.  I wouldn't expect it to do a thing on the body of the sheep, but was wondering more about legs and faces of wool breeds.  We don't use the shearing machine on the face, it would never be safe for us.  It gets a little scary around their eyes.    

Does granddaughter help shear?  I wish I could have learned at a young age.


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## ksalvagno (Nov 27, 2012)

The smaller clippers should work fine on the face and legs.


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## Alice Acres (Nov 27, 2012)

Bre was the helper - at the time the clipper was almost as heavy as she was 
As for alpaca crias - I meant they (Andis) would likely work  just fine - on sheep it would be that they wouldn't work at all. The lanolin would be a big mess, it's bad enough with the big clippers.

We used to have wooly legged and faced sheep - and hubby used the shearmaster clippers on them all over. Now we have clean faced and legged sheep - it's so much nicer all the way around. 
He and a friend used to do commercial flocks, but after his back surgery he stopped doing that. Just does our own sheep now.


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## Southdown (Nov 29, 2012)

Ask your husband how he did their faces and legs!  Did he use a particular comb?  We have so far used a 10-tooth and a 20 tooth.


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