This is true and also not true. We've thrown away cow hides and sheep skins/wool for lack of demand, but I also know the wool industry and they're not exactly chomping at the bit to get their hands on the garbage wool slaughterhouses (or in our case small/medium farms) produce. There are producers who raised sheep just for high quality wool whose meat you wouldn't really want to eat..

[–] madcaesar@lemmy.world 6 points 7 months ago

Damn throwing away cow hide sounds so sad... That stuff is awesome I can't believe there was no takers.

[–] evranch@lemmy.ca 4 points 7 months ago

Yes valid point, our wool is not ideal being farm flock wool, medium fibers. But for years we still sheared/skirted/bagged and tried to deliver at least a saleable product, it was disappointing to see it go to zero value. I would love to see it at least made into insulation batts or something.

Most of that high end Merino wool comes from places like NZ where they can graze year round, here the hay and chaff always mess the wool up a little and most have said running a true fiber flock is not economical. In Canada at least fiber has always just been an adjunct to a productive meat flock.

I ran some Columbias for a couple years but let them go quick. Gorgeous wool but terribly behaved critters and the lambing percentage and flavour were very poor compared to our Dorset cross main flock.