iN VIDEO: It’s South Okanagan sheep sheering time

Sheep shearing season is well underway in B.C. and a master at the craft, Pieter Demooy, is making his way through the South Okanagan one farm at a time armed with shearing tools and lots of elbow grease.

Demooy shears roughly 8,000 sheep, goats and alpacas during the busiest months of March to the end of June. The animals need to be sheared every year.

“There is no hard deadline that sheep have to be sheered by, but some people get panicky when the temperature gets warmer and they want the wool off, so I’m busy every spring,” he said. 

Sheep shearing can often be a dirty job and it requires a great deal of physical strength. Demooy has been shearing sheep since he was a teenager growing up on a farm in B.C.

“I figured out a way to hack the wool off our sheep and the neighbour’s sheep, but one day a New Zealander watched me,” Demooy said. “He said ‘well you’re getting the wool off. There’s an easier way.”

Demooy ended up training in New Zealand when he was 22, where sheep shearing is a big trade with thousands of shearers and millions of sheep.

“Shearing is more unusual in Canada, it isn’t something you see all the time,” he said. “In New Zealand, it’s a whole different industry. When I was there, I’d shear 40,000 sheep per year, so I’m feeling like I’m pretty slack here.”

It takes Demooy less than two minutes to shear an animal, but he has to catch it first.

The job of catching animals, turning them over and moving them around to shear them takes a lot of physical strength, especially in the arms, back and shoulders.

It can also be a bit gross.

“You can find maggots if the sheep have lots of wool and its fly season,” Demooy said. “I feel better for the sheep after I’ve sheared off maggots. They also have keds in their wool, which are wingless flies that look like ticks. Keds feed off the sheep’s blood and cause itchy bites.

“When we shear the sheep it reveals the keds. Chickens like to peck them off. Farmers can treat them and get rid of them.”

When sheep eat fresh green grass it can cause diarrhea that Demooy has to clean off.

“It’s not the prettiest job, some days you take a shower and change your clothes after.”

Demooy lives on Vancouver Island and his company Last Side Shearing provides sheep and alpaca shearing services all over southwest B.C. He also does hoof trimming, vaccinations and deworming.

On April 24, Demooy sheared five sheep and a goat on December Jewel’s Keremeos farm and she took a video of it. Demooy is seen swiftly and masterfully maneuvering the animals and removing the wool.

Go here for more of December Jewels’ farm videos.

Go here for more videos of Pieter Demooy shearing sheep.