Rules for making sheep skins at home
Every farmer in the sheep business needs to know how to properly dress sheep skins. Nowadays, sheepskin is very popular, and especially the leroy skin. Making sheep skins at home is not an easy task, but nothing is impossible, and therefore everyone should try.
Sheepskin dressing
Important points during preparation for dressing
The dressing of sheep skins should be carried out quickly, immediately after the death of the animal. Every minute they lose their attractiveness, as a result of which the price of sheep skins drops several times. The skin is processed in stages, namely:
- aging;
- fleshing;
- pickling;
- washing;
- tanning and drying.
First, you need to carefully examine the skin. If there are residues of fat, meat or tendons on it, they must be removed. You can use a knife to do this. After that, you need to clean the skins from various debris. After that, the sheepskin skin is folded in half and transferred to a cool place for several hours.
The skin may have a bad smell, it is imperative to get rid of it, because the cost of the animal skin depends, among other things, on its aroma.
Soak the skin
How to skin a sheep at home? The first step starts with soaking. To do this, you need to prepare a very large container so that the skin completely crawls into it. Each animal has its own dimensions, so you need to be prepared for anything. The skin should be soaked completely with a saline solution, for the preparation of which you will need to take:
- furacilin or formalin tablets;
- edible salt;
- vinegar.
2 tablets of furacilin or 0.1 ml of formalin are used per 1 liter of water. If half a liter of water or more is used, the dosage should be decreased or increased. Salt is first boiled, and then added to the finished solution. It will need 30-50 g, it is thrown at its discretion. In order for the prepared solution to be disinfectant, you can add vinegar, 5 g per 1 liter of water.
People who, with their eyes closed, can scrape the skin of lambs know that it is allowed to add a decoction of birch or oak leaves to the solution. Broth take 500 g per 10 liters. The duration of soaking the skin in the ready-made solution lasts 12 hours, no less. To be able to understand that the sheepskin leather is ready for processing, you need to try to scrape off its inner area a little. If this is easy, then you can start treating the skin at a new stage.
Flesh skin
At this stage, the treatment consists of the fact that it will be necessary to remove the remaining fat, sebum and excess skin. In order to do everything right at home at this stage, the skins of the animals are stretched. If farmers have been dressing at home for a long time, they may have a special machine that can stretch the skins without much effort. If not, spread the leather on a flat surface.
When the lamb skin has already been cooked and stretched, scraping can be carried out: in this way it will be possible to see the remnants of fat and fat even in hard-to-reach places and quickly cope with these moments. You can take a special metal scraper or knife and start scraping.
You should be careful: the tools should not be too sharp: it is so easy to damage the skin. Scraping is carried out from bottom to top, starting with the limbs and gradually moving to the neck.
Pickling and washing skins
After the completion of fleshing, they begin to wash. To do this, you need to prepare a solution and then put the skin in it. To prepare it, you will need 3 g of washing powder and 20 g of table salt. These ingredients are dissolved in 1 liter of water. When the solution is ready, the skin is dipped into it for 5 minutes (no more), but so that it is completely covered with the solution.
After 5 minutes, the skin is pulled out and the treatment continues. The sheep skin is unscrewed and given to the next stage. Sheepskin skins are processed to make the skin soft, beautiful and supple. This stage is called sanding. For this stage, you also need to prepare pre-cooked salt. Take 50 g of salt and 15 g of vinegar per 1 liter of water. Just as during the first stage, the skin must lie in the solution for at least 12 hours.
You need to understand that the skin has already been processed at this stage, so it is checked. Take the sheepskin skin, fold it in half and squeeze it. After that, the material is straightened back and see if there is a trace of the fold. If there is no strip, the work at this stage was successful, and if it remains somewhere, then everything is repeated all over again.
Tanning and fatliquoring stage of the material
Leather dressing is not complete without this stage: it provides the material with good quality at home. The sheepskin finishing technology aims to add stability to the material. For this, a solution is also prepared. Take 50 g of table salt and 6 g of chrome tanning agent and dilute in 1 liter of water. The sheep skin is placed in a container and covered completely with a solution. The material in the prepared solution should be kept throughout the day. The solution is tasted and heated from time to time to keep it warm.
The fatliquoring process makes the sheepskin leather shiny. To start carrying out this stage, you need to prepare a solution for which they take:
- 100 g table salt;
- 25 g glycerin;
- 20 g of ammonia;
- 70 g of egg yolk.
With the prepared solution, grease the skin and put already cooking material in such a way that it touches each other with the inside. As already mentioned, the skin of sheep has a bad smell, which must also be gotten rid of. Before fatliquoring, alum is added to the solution, they perfectly allow you to remove unpleasant odors, as well as give elasticity and speed up drying. In this way, the material is disinfected, various bacteria are removed.
Drying of finished material
The owner of the sheep, after he began to manufacture the material, must definitely dry it. But before you start drying, you need to process the skin well: squeeze it out. For drying, the sheep skin is removed in a heat chamber. The temperature must be within 40 ° C, then the calcination and drying will be at the highest level.
Drying of finished material
If the skin is black, remove and lighten it. For this, hydrogen peroxide diluted in water is usually used. But basically, during all the procedures, the skin lightens itself, as it is soaked in powder and vinegar.
Conclusion
How to skin a ram at home? Everything is very simple, the main thing is that there is a desire to learn. Basically, sheep skins are taken from young animals: they are much softer and easier to handle. Also, if the skin has lost its color after all treatments, it can be bleached.
After the dressing is finished, the sheepskin material is used to prepare various things.Carpets are sewn from skins that can decorate any interior, and beautiful fur coats. In many countries, natural sheep skin is used in the form of various blankets and bedspreads. They are quite warm, so they can be used to cover a small child and, of course, newborn babies who will be very warm.
Sheep is almost always used to sell fur products. Dressing takes a little time - you can have time to process everything in a few days. How to properly skin a ram? Elementary! The main thing is to follow all the recommendations and properly prepare all the necessary solutions.
How much one such skin will cost directly depends on the finish, quality and size of the material, so dressing should be carried out in accordance with all the rules. Those who raise sheep should remember that they should also take care of the health of animals: provide proper treatment on time, as well as feed and adhere to all the necessary rules.