One of the farms surrounding Richmond is the largest merino sheep farm in South Africa (merino wool is the really soft, really expensive stuff). I’ve befriended the farmers who own it, John and Lorette, and they invited me to see the shearing process. City girl that I am, I’ve never seen a sheep being…shorn…except at the Dutchess County Fair in Upstate NY...but that doesn't count. They shear the sheep every 6-8 months, and the process itself is incredible to see. They shear nearly 500 sheep a day in a huge barn with about twelve guys quickly, systematically cutting away at their thick coats. The sheep are baaing, making a racket, and the workers are sweating and muscling them around. Several other farm workers stand for hours sorting for quality (the good quality for clothes, the denser stuff for carpets, etc) – apparently, more than 90% of the wool is exported.
I also got to see the more intimate side of farm life…a system of “practice artificial insemination,” in which they train rams to ejaculate into a fake vagina. They hold an ewe, and bring in one ram at a time to sniff her and eventually mount her; as he is about to ejaculate, farm workers use an artificial vagina to collect semen. It was a long process, with several rams, but only one ewe. What a job. Lorette showed us a small vial of semen, which can apparently inseminate up to 20 ewes, and said “look you can still see the sperm swimming!” I guess farmers are very open about all of this…I thought it was totally awesome.
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