Benefits of Natural Merino & other Breeds Wool products.

Wool is one of the products of New Zealand we have been involved with all our lives. As a boy my father was a stock buyer in both South America & Australia before bringing the family back to his home country New Zealand. We settled here on a family farm producing Wool from a flock of 5000 sheep and running beef and later deer as well. As children we were very much involved in the running of the farm and shearing time was always the busiest time of the year. Later with a change of sheep breed we were shearing two & sometimes three times every year. I became very interested & involved in the processes our wool took from sheep's back to final product. New Zealand wool garments have a reputation world wide as quality products.

My wife Judy & I set up a home based business marketing & producing pure wool garments from our own wool.

This included hand knitted wool sweaters and later pure wool upholstery & curtaining material. Through all this we gained an intimate knowledge of all the special qualities of wool. Wool has a host of different uses and as a natural product deserves a priority listing wherever it can be used.

The Merino originally came from Spain a breed noted for its ability to withstand extremes of temperature and survive on very sparse pastures.These areas the merino flourished on where other breeds would not have survived. The merino's very fine & dense fleece protecting it from both extreme cold & Heat. It is not generally known that the Arabs wore woollen cloaks to protect them from the heat in the desert.

To protect ourselves against the very changeable weather we very good outdoor clothing.
Woollen singlets and a woollen bush shirt, wool socks , balaclava, and sometimes gloves, woollen tweed trousers as well. Today fine merino wool is making a name for itself as one of the products of New Zealand in lightweight sports wear as in the Icebreaker brand. Swanndri is a name well recognised as warm winter clothing for on the farm. Wool has the ability to absorb moisture, up to 16% of its own weight without becoming clammy and uncomfortable as with synthetic fibres.

As a youth I spent five years in the high Country of new Zealand with a team of working Sheep dogs "Mustering" merino Sheep for the various station owners. This was hard work and we were extremely fit walking in Mountainous country sometimes eight to ten hours a day, Breakfast usually 3am and then often a 3 to five hour climb to get onto our beats where the work of herding the sheep and hunting them through to the next days territory began. We would return to camp, just a rough hut in the bush, by 4 or 5 o'çlock in the afternoon.
The Autumn muster involved bringing the sheep of the high tops down to the lower country where they were less exposed to snow and the harsh winter conditions.

There is a big range of wool types coming from an even bigger range of sheep breeds.
The standard measurement for wool is its fibre diameter ranging from the Super fine usually from the Merino Breed at 11 to 21 micron to the very coarse 35 to 41 micron from the Scottish Blackface & Drysdale breeds. Each type has its speciality uses. The Super fine & fine wools going to Suiting and apparel while the coarse end is primarily used in carpets.
The coarser wool breeds are generally run on the easier country under higher stocking rates. Still needing the help of our working sheep dogs to manage. These coarser wool breeds also shear a much longer fibre requiring shearing more often sometimes even twice a year to get the length required by manufacturers.
The finer end of this still goes into apparel and the coarse into carpets and upholstery. Wool is also used for building insulation, as a sponge for collecting spilt oil, covers for Tennis balls, even slug gun pellets, and the natural grease or oil from wool is used for lanolin and in the cosmetic industry as well. Of the products of New Zealand,wool, a versatile fibre, should be your first choice every time.