[jaykay]

Found this:
" Am I allowed to sell my fleeces to handspinners?
Yes. Under paragraph 70 of the British Wool Marketing Scheme (Approval) Order, any fleece sold directly to a handspinner to be processed by hand, by that spinner, is exempt from the BWMB scheme. This is in addition to the relatively well- known rare breed exemption, under which fleece from the following native breeds can be sold outside the Scheme: Balwen, Boreray, Castlemilk Moorit, Hebridean, Leicester Longwool, Lincoln Longwool, Llanwenog, Manx Loaghtan, Norfolk Horn, North Ronaldsay, Portland, Soay, and Teeswater. It is less widely known that crosses with those breeds are also exempt"


In this leaflet about spinners and fleeces http://www.yarnmaker.co.uk/fleece/FleeceSellweb.pdf


 This is driving me mad, I HATE this new quote and weblink system.

[colliewoman]

Has anyone ever gotten into trouble with the WMB over fleeces?
People round here keep telling me I am supposed to sell my fleeces this way. What will they do to you if you say 'NO'.? I can't imagine it is a hanging offence
Anyway I tell people I don't shear my sheep (true) and that they shed their fleeces naturally (technically true), and allow them to assume that it is stuck in hedges etc not plucked lovingly and saved for spinning

[jaykay]

Well every year I have faithfully registered with the WMB and each year they have failed to send me my woolsack and then, when I've finally got myself one, they have failed to turn up to collect it, though they collect my (very large) neighbour's sacks, half a mile down the road (the farm is large, not the neighbour  )

So I have a hayloft full of Rough Fell fleeces, which now I need to deal with.

This year I have Shetland fleeces. Which I am going to do with as I see fit! Mainly, in fact, I shall spin them myself.

[SallyintNorth]

This year I have Shetland fleeces. Which I am going to do with as I see fit! Mainly, in fact, I shall spin them myself.

   Swapsies???  Or, given I only have 4 CMs and one's busy losing its fleece; swapsie? 

[Remy]

Thanks for all the interesting info; what do you do with fleeces no good for selling - some of mine are quite mucky/fall apart, and are only good for the bin - can they go out with normal refuse or do they have to be disposed of in a certain way?

[Foobar]

They will compost if you mix them in with your other compost.


Or if you have any poached gateways etc throw them down on there, they will bind the mud together nicely.

[AllenFrost]

I am getting ready to sell eight fleeces from my Gulf Coast Native Sheep here in the US.  Since this is my first sale I was wondering if I was getting a fair price.  I realize the market may be different here and that you may not be familiar with this US sheep breed, but was wondering what an average price might be for unwashed, skirted fleece.  It is not a fine wool and some are black and some white.  I have been offered $1.50 USD per pound. 

[Brucklay]

I think that works out at about £1 english to 2kg of fleece - here I think folk can get up to about £5 per fleece 1kg - 2kg but that would be for good fleeces to spinners so hopefully someone with more knowledge will come along

[tizaala]

2 seasons ago 4 pence a kilo was the average price for low grade carpet wool, last year it picked up a little but did not cover the cost of sheering for the big sheep men who must sell to the wool marketing board.
Nice soft long staple wool will command a bigger price, for home spinners, Angora goat fleece can get £40 per kilo.
So compared to us , I think you have a good deal there Frosty.

[Fleecewife]

Prices for good quality fleece tend to be higher in the US than in Britain, but there seems to be more choice so your product needs to be good.   Have a look at online fleece sales to see what the going rate is, or pop along to one of the many fleece and fibre festivals.
 
Brucklay - £5 is the minimum anyone should accept for a fleece intended for craft work - less than that and it's such poor quality as not to be worth selling.  A good quality run of the mill fleece would sell for about £10 and a perfect sooper-dooper fleece could sell for as much as £40 (but there are not many of those around  ).  The British Wool Marketing Board of course pays far less than that, just a few pence before collection, but they buy the whole clip, not just selected top quality fleeces.
 
My maths tells me that at $1.50 per pound, with a roughly 1:1 exchange rate, would be £3 per kg, so £6 for an average 2kg fleece. Or have I got my exchange rate from pre financial implosion?  AllenFrost, I would say your price is fair enough for a first time sale, before you know more about what potential buyers are looking for.
 
 

[Brucklay]

Thanks for the update Fleecewife always a font of knowledge - I need to sell my Shetland fleeces and CM somehow - their first shear and I bought them pedigree and was told they had good fleeces - they are all very soft and springy - but have yet to learn the technical terms ie not sure of 'crimp' and they all weigh between 1 and 2 kilo - never enough hours in the day to learn everything I need to and implement

[jaykay]

Your local spinners will snap both those type of fleeces up!

[Fleecewife]

The fleeces sound lovely Brucklay.  Once they are skirted ie dags and any scruffy bits of wool pulled off around the edges to neaten it up a bit, and any major bits of veggie stuff taken off the surface, they would sell well via the internet if you don't know anyone locally looking for fleece.  It's much less bother to sell them within this country though or you get caught up in export requirements.
 
Crimp is the number of little kinks along the length of a fibre or staple.  If you lie a small tuft of your fleece along a ruler you can actually count the number of kinks per inch.  Crimp affects how springy the fleece feels to some extent but mainly it affects how much the eventual fabric and yarn will spring back ie its resilience.  Shetland fleece is quite crimpy, Merino is very crimpy, Hebridean is not usually very crimpy (average about 2 -3 per inch).  The wool over the shoulder and neck is usually the crimpiest on any sheep, and the least is found over the britch, where the sheep sits.  For Shetlands the ideal is to have even crimp and micron count (diameter of each fibre) over the whole fleece from top to tail.

[tizaala]

Alan's sheep
 
The bloodlines of Gulf Coast Native sheep can be traced back to the original prolifteration of Churra sheep in the New World during the 15th century by the Spanish. Later, these Criollo-type sheep mixed intermittently with British and French breeds. Some strains may also show Tunis influence.^[1]
http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://www.albc-usa.org/images/GulfCoast.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.albc-usa.org/cpl/gulfcoast.html&h=269&w=360&sz=66&tbnid=NndCEH4ESLdD1M:&tbnh=93&tbnw=124&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dgulf%2Bcoast%2Bnative%2Bsheep%26tbm%3Disch%26tbo%3Du&zoom=1&q=gulf+coast+native+sheep&usg=__4LeaQ7oHb5lfLgt29IVIvGAG3MU=&docid=zEYXQbkzYTECBM&sa=X&ei=uzvQT721DeOy0QW_x8HJCw&ved=0CIABEPUBMAM&dur=938

[jaykay]

Good horns on the tips  The ewes look quite Shetlandy, have thought that about Churros before too.