This is not to clean the sheep it’s to get rid of parasites that can irritate the sheep and cause a lower quality of wool. Imagine it like shampoo for lice.
Virtually 100% of sheep in the commercial wool industry are sent to slaughter when wool quality begins to decline at age 5-6 (lifespan is typically 10-20 years).
Wool farms typically keep the top 20-30% of female lambs for wool, and send the surplus 70-80% of lambs to slaughter. The vast majority of lamb meat comes from lambs who are between 6-12 months of age.
The male lambs who are not sent to slaughter are mostly castrated (with a 4% death rate from the procedure) and kept for wool, with a small amount being kept to breed with the females (they’re called rams). If the rams have poor wool quality, are temperamental, or show homosexual behavior, they are sent to slaughter.
Roughly 1.7 million sheep are killed every single day, with over 90% being 6-8 months old.
Mulesing: Common in Australia (which produces over half the world's merino wool), lambs have large folds of skin cut from their hindquarters—frequently without painkillers—to prevent flystrike (when flies lay eggs in the skin folds).
Physical Mutilations: Procedures such as tail docking and castration are routinely performed on young lambs with little to no pain relief.
Shearing Abuse: Animal rights investigations (such as those by PETA) have documented instances of fast-paced, piece-rate shearing leading to rough handling, cuts, and physical abuse of sheep in shearing sheds.
Slaughter and Aging: Once sheep pass their prime wool-producing years, many are transported long distances and sent to slaughterhouses for meat, sometimes without adequate stunning.
This is not a nice industry, it’s not a nice life for them. It is industrial, it is cruel. Don’t buy wool. Don’t eat meat. If you love sheep, please go vegan 🌱🐑💚
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u/Technical-Prize-4840 6h ago
It might just be the color of wet wool, but they look whiter/cleaner going in than they do coming out to me.