Is shearing cruel? Why a merino needs its yearly haircut
Necati Yesil
No. Done well, shearing is a haircut, and for a merino it is a necessity. Wild sheep shed their coats every spring; over thousands of years people bred sheep whose fleece grows all year and never sheds, and the merino is the far end of that line. Left unshorn, a merino overheats, struggles to walk and becomes a target for flystrike. What can be cruel is how shearing is done, and practices like mulesing, which is why it is worth asking where any wool comes from.
Why we owe the sheep
For most of human history, animal skins and wool were what stood between people and harsh weather. Long before central heating, a wool cloak or blanket decided who made it through a winter.
Over thousands of years we bred sheep to grow more and more wool, and the merino is the result. Today, whether we like it or not, that wool has to be shorn off a merino for it to live a healthy life. That is not a testament to human cruelty. It is a testament to how much we are part of nature, and how much we need the nature around us. It leaves us with a duty to take care of it and honor it in the best way we can.
Wool is only one example of why people could not have come this far without the animals we have shared our history with. We want to honor the ones that protected us from the harshest of mother nature, by giving us their wool.
Eleven thousand years together
Sheep were among the first animals people domesticated. A 2025 ancient-DNA study published in Science traces domestic sheep to wild mouflon in the northern Fertile Crescent more than 11,000 years ago. The earliest sheep-herding village in its sample, Aşıklı Höyük, is in central Türkiye, the country where our toppers are made today.
Those first sheep did not look like the animals we picture. Wild sheep grow a coarse, hairy outer coat over a soft woolly undercoat, and moult it every spring. Over the following millennia, farmers kept and bred the animals with more wool and less shedding. Geneticists who study the difference put it simply: what sets most domestic breeds apart from the mouflon is a woolly fleece that grows all year and does not shed.
The merino is the far end of that line. It was bred in Spain for fine, soft wool, and reached Australia in 1797, when 26 merinos bought at the Cape of Good Hope were shipped to Port Jackson, today’s Sydney; more than half died on the way. In 2020 Australia had under a tenth of the world’s sheep and grew more than half of its fine merino wool.
What happens when a merino is not shorn
Because the fleece never stops growing, it has to come off, usually once a year. Researchers who study wool shedding note that non-shedding sheep need annual shearing to stay healthy, and welfare groups agree: SPCA New Zealand’s position is that woolly farmed animals require regular shearing, and that without it they risk flystrike, skin infections, heat stroke and trouble moving.
Flystrike is the one farmers fear most. Blowflies lay their eggs in damp, soiled wool, and the maggots that hatch feed on the sheep’s skin.
The best-known case is Chris, a merino found wandering near Canberra in 2015 after at least five years without a shearer. His fleece weighed 41.1 kg, about 90 lb, a Guinness World Record. He was weak, slightly bow-legged and struggling to walk, and vets thought he had only weeks to live. Champion shearer Ian Elkins took the fleece off while Chris was sedated, and underneath it vets found skin infections caused by the urine and dung trapped in the wool. The fleece is now in the National Museum of Australia.
Does shearing hurt?
Wool is hair, made of keratin like your own hair and nails, and there are no nerves in it. Cutting it does not hurt any more than a haircut does. A skilled shearer moves the sheep through a set sequence of positions that keep it calm and still, and takes the fleece off in one piece in a few minutes. The sheep walks away lighter and cooler.
What can hurt is a rushed or careless job: nicks from the handpiece, rough handling, shearing at the wrong time. Good practice, in SPCA New Zealand’s words, means low-stress handling before, during and after shearing and treating any cut straight away; it also means avoiding cold or wet weather, giving extra feed and shelter for at least four weeks afterwards when the weather turns, and not shearing ewes that are heavily pregnant.
Where cruelty does happen, and what to ask
The worry about wool does not come from nowhere. There are sheds where speed has come before the animal, and there is mulesing: cutting away strips of wool-bearing skin from around a lamb’s tail so the scar stays bare and clean and flies have nowhere to lay their eggs. It prevents one kind of suffering by causing another, and it has been used on merinos in Australia for decades.
Both are why standards exist. New Zealand banned mulesing outright on 1 October 2018, with fines for anyone who does it. The Responsible Wool Standard, run by the non-profit Textile Exchange, prohibits mulesing on the farms it certifies and audits how their animals are treated.
So ask any wool brand three things, us included:
- Is the wool mulesing-free, and how do you know?
- Which country, and which farms or suppliers, does it come from?
- Is it certified, and can you name the certificate?
Our pillow wool comes from New Zealand, where mulesing has been illegal since 2018.
Honoring them
We do not think the right response to an animal that has kept people warm for eleven thousand years is to stop using its wool. A merino will grow a fleece this year whether anyone wants it or not. The right response is to make sure it comes off well, to use all of it, and to make things from it that last for decades, so every fleece is worth what it cost the animal to grow.
Questions people ask
Does shearing hurt the sheep?
Not when it is done properly. Wool has no nerves, like hair. Nicks can happen with a rushed or careless shearer, which is why skill and handling matter, and any cut should be treated straight away.
Could sheep just be left unshorn?
Not woolly breeds like the merino. Their fleece grows all year and does not shed, so an unshorn sheep overheats, struggles to move and is exposed to flystrike and skin infections. Some hair breeds and a few primitive breeds shed naturally; merinos are not among them.
What is mulesing?
Cutting away strips of wool-bearing skin from around a lamb’s tail so the area stays bare and flies cannot strike there. It is banned in New Zealand and prohibited under the Responsible Wool Standard.
Sources
- Trinity College Dublin, Ancient DNA analyses bring to life the 11,000-year intertwined genomic history of sheep and humans, 2025, on Daly K.G. et al., Science, 2025.
- Matika O. et al., Genetic factors controlling wool shedding in a composite Easycare sheep flock, Animal Genetics 44(6):742–749, 2013.
- National Museum of Australia, Merino sheep introduced.
- National Museum of Australia, Chris the sheep: world-record fleece.
- SPCA New Zealand, Position statement: shearing, including crutching and dagging.
- Farm Online, New Zealand bans mulesing, September 2018.
- SGB Online, Responsible Wool Standard bans mulesing, June 2016.
