What Is A Shearling?

Hi all, we often refer to some of our sheeps on here as a "shearling". Whether this is a common farming term or just a term of local dialect I am not sure but as we have had a couple of queries about it I thought I would post an answer here.

A shearling is a sheep that has only been sheared once, as in a "shear" ling. Our shearlings were born not last year but the year before and so it is often synonymous with never having lambs before althought not necessarily true. Basically a shearling has had its fleece shorn only once but because it oftne means it has also never had lambs before, they are often prone to have difficult lambing, just like first-time human mums can often have a difficult first child.

Our shearlings this year have been particularly difficult... Lottie had her premature lamb, Patch prolapsed and two Greenbacks (G and G1) rejected their first lamb and are now threatening to reject their second.... We have recently discovered that tom-cat urine could be the cause for sheep prolapses which could explain Lottie and Patch as they were kept in a field at the bottom of the farm where it is highly likely that tom-cats roam around and we are hoping that G and G1 are just being silly sods as shearlings and will improve as mothers next year (if they are still with us!!!).

Hope this explains a bit!

Thanks Dan for the information. I had figured it was something to do with shearing but wasnt too sure.

Thanks again

Thanks, Dan.  I figured it was something like that.  So, are shearling also yearlings?  In other words, are they one year old, or more?

Thanks for the really good explanations. I knew about shearlings but the information about cat urine was new to me - is it a scientific fact or folklore ?

Dan, I think you have answered my question - they are more than a year old, in fact, are probably two years old.