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The time for sheep shearing has arrived, a practice that comes from far, far back in time. There is already news of the shearing in the III dynasty of the city of Ur (2111-2003 BC), which controlled the lower area of ??Mesopotamia.
The process by which the wool fleece of a sheep is cut is called shearing. The person in charge of this process is the shearer.
Usually each adult sheep is sheared every year. It is done both on large livestock farms (hundreds and sometimes more than 3,000 sheep are often processed per day), as well as on small farmhouses with flocks, such as in Catalonia.
In Las Fotos de los Lectores de La Vanguardia we can see images of sheep shearing, in this case, at Mas Niubó, in Manlleu, Osona region. It is the moment of “tondre”, a word that in Catalan refers to the action of cutting the hair of an animal very close to where it is born.
In Catalonia there is the figure of the “tonedor”, a person who shears the wool from sheep. Shearing to remove the wool fleece from sheep is an essential part of sheep farming.
Before it was a manual trade, which was done with giant scissors, in the open, often in the threshing floor, except when it rained, which is when the corral was used.
Now it has been mechanized and it takes much less time. This is often done in a shed designed to process hundreds of sheep, except for the smallest and most family-run farms that still use more traditional methods.
Every year, in Ripoll, a wool festival is held where shearers demonstrate how to shear sheep.
