Preparing Your Sheepskin for Tanning
Lee Bates
As a sheep producer, you are looking for Value-Added products to enhance your
butcher-lambs value. Have you considered having your pelts tanned after butchering? This
process requires some time, on your part, but is very worthwhile in adding value to the
lambs you have chosen to sell for slaughtering. This procedure is not for those lambs sold
at livestock auctions, but for those you sell to customers for filling their freezers full
of delicious, young, tender lamb that far exceeds that imported product also called lamb
that is usually of one year of age and has been in cold storage for a long time before
arriving in the U.S. and your local market.
First of all, find a good butcher who is skilled at butchering lambs and is good to
work with. Your butcher needs to be practiced at skinning your animals with minimal use of
knives for the bulk of the largest part of the hide. You do not want butcher cuts that
compromise your lovely pelt for the tanning process. Cutting with knives is necessary to
separate the skin from the body, legs and around the tail, but when the pelt is beginning
to be taken off the hanging carcass, it is removed from rump to neck while the carcass is
hanging upside down from the gambrel. It is fisted or punched off away from the body and
usually slips easily unless the animal is very thin or is an intact male with little fat
under the skin.I stay with my lambs being butchered for the entire process, so I can
collect the skins and rush home with them to prepare them for lovely soft sheepskins.
There are some things you will need to have on hand before you prepare your skins for
drying.
1. A sack of hay salt. It can be purchased in 50 pound sacks from your local farm feed
store. There are no extra additives, so the cost is low, usually less than $4.00 for 50
pounds. DO NOT USE ROCK SALT! Rock salt is for making ice cream or keeping ice melting
from drives or sidewalks. Hay salt is fine grained and easy to handle. I use a washed out
and dried tuna or cat-food can for my scoop to take out a portion as I heavily salt each
skin.
2. Racks to dry your skins on. My husband is a handyman, and while I had been using old
sturdy wooden pallets spread evenly all over our garage floor, he thought a better method
would be to have 4x4 inch legs on the pallets of about 6-8 inches in height. Then, as the
pallets were covered, wool side down on the wood and each skin thickly sprinkled with hay
salt, at about 4-5 pounds of salt per hide, they all could be stacked taking up less floor
surface space, and accomplishing the same task.
3. A dry, closed building that will be the location your skins can cure and dry in. The
skins SHOULD NOT be exposed to direct sunlight, for this will cause drying and cracking of
the skin. No artificial heat should be applied to hasten the process, but allow the skin
to drip off and drain as the salt works at removing all the fluid from the hide. Remember,
the skin is the largest organ of any living mammal's body and much fluid is retained
therein. I mention having a closed building to cure them in. My first effort was in a
three sided shed, and a neighbor's dogs attempted to rustle my drying sheepskin. These
skins are very tempting to canines, so protect them from being damaged. Even chickens will
attempt to trim the hides.
Now, you are ready to begin. With your wooden pallet laid out with the most
crosspieces of wood on the upper side, carefully spread your skin out the long way onto
the long way of your pallet. Drape the legs over the edges, as these will not be tanned.
They also make good troughs for fluid to drain from the hide. I use plastic disposable
gloves to protect my hands from the drying qualities of the salt I will be using. Using
your gloved hands, push and spread the salt thickly over the legs skin and across all of
the bared meat-side of the hide. There may be some fat or thin connective muscle that held
the skin onto the sheep, but do not be concerned with these. With the heavy salting, this
will all drain and dry and will later be buffed away when the skin is being tanned. When
you are finished with one skin, work on the next and repeat this process. I stack my
footed pallets to 6 or 7 high at a time. In dry summer weather, the skins may be dry
enough to ship in about 2 weeks, as here in northern Idaho, our humidity is low. In the
rainy season, this drying time could be up to a month in length, but whatever you do, do
NOT send raw non-cured skins to your tanner, for they could spoil and be discarded as
rotten product. And, your local shipping service may refuse your future business!
Many times, the wool around the neck area will be contaminated with blood. Do not wash
it off or further wet the wooled hide, as this prolongs the drying time. Your tanner will
be using water in his process, and that will lyse the blood stains and they will be all
cleaned away.
It is imperative to process your skins immediately after butchering, as body heat can
ruin a hide as well as leaving them lying in a pile in the sunlight.
When you are ready to ship your skin(s), find a sturdy cardboard box. I use those boxes
that large water coolers are shipped in. I inquire at my local water distributors of those
large carbuoys that are delivered to homes and have them save the boxes for me. They
flatten them and I collect many each time I go there. Two to three dried salted skins can
be rolled together and fit nicely in the box. Put your name and address plus that of where
you are sending them to on the box flaps in case of damage in the shipping process. Label
your box and ship by U.P.S. (cheapest carrier) and after about 3 -4 months, you will
receive a bill for payment, or else, the tanner will ship by C.O.D. Sometimes this is not
convenient to the recipient, so I have an agreement with my tanner to bill me. Then, upon
receipt of my check, he ships me my paid for beautiful sheepskins. It is a joy to open
that package when they arrive. They have been carefully trimmed, are soft, clean and the
leather side is soft and buffed like chamois.
I would like to encourage anyone who produces butcher lambs to try this, as you will be
sold on the beauty of your product that will last for many years and be witness to some of
the animals you have raised. These by-products or value-added products are what will keep
us all in business, even when the market prices go so low that we cannot recover our
expenses in the raising of the lambs.
I have used two tanners with success. They have reasonable prices compared to others I
have researched. I list them in order of preference.
Stern Tanning Company, Inc.
P.O. Box 55 (for sending payment upon receipt of billing)
334 Broadway Street (for shipping sheepskins)
Sheboygan Falls, WI 53085
Phone # (414) 467-8615
Bucks County Fur Products
P.O. Box 204
220 2 North Ambler Street
Quakertown, PA 18951
Phone # (215) 536-6614
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